In general, my heroine looks like combination of Olivia Munn and Nicole Scherzinger, but younger. While those two women are gorgeous, for structural reasons my heroine is in her early 30s. I suppose Munn could “play younger” or be de-aged a little bit. (This is all delusional at this point because I haven’t finished the novel yet, much less gotten to the point where I can seriously think about any sort of movie adaptation.)
But I like to daydream, so, lulz.
Here’s a gratuitous picture of Olivia Munn.
So if you take Olivia Munn and combine her with Nicole Scherzinger…
And make this combined woman younger, you get…
…Corrie Yee.
Anyway. I’m just letting off some steam at the moment before I turn my attention to trying to lock down the first three chapters of the third draft of the novel.
One of the rules of thumb about writing a novel is one should avoid pontificating on the nature of any supposed Hollywood adaptation of your novel when you’re still struggling to get the damn thing done. But, lulz, I never do what I’m supposed to do, so here goes.
The key thing about this novel is, given both marketing and human nature, the thing everyone will hone in on is my heroine being both being involved in sex work and owning an alternative weekly. That is the thing that everyone will run around yelling and debating if this novel ever is sold and has even a modicum of success.
If I was a transgendered, undocumented twentysomething woman then, yes, of course, any qualms the “woke cancel culture mob” had about such a novel would evaporate. But here I am, a 50-year-old CIS white male writing something that in the eyes of some, I have no business writing about. Some people’s minds will shut down the moment they hear “stripper” and “written by a CIS white male.”
But, just for shits and giggles, let’s assume I somehow manage to get past that obstacle. Given what I know of Hollywood actresses, plenty of them would get off on playing such an interesting character, especially one in which they get a few scenes where they work the pole. And I have done my best not to make the whole stripper angle not seem to gratuitous.
It’s done in a rather matter-of-fact way. I like this potentially controversial element of the story because there’s all this conflict involved as the two sides of my heroine’s life occasionally smash into each other in unexpected an interesting ways.
In my mind, my heroine looks like a younger version of Olivia Munn. In fact, I would say Ms. Munn would be perfect to play the heroine, but for her being about a decade too old. Another woman who I have rolling around in my mind as I write my heroine is Nicole Scherzinger. But, again, she’s too old. But Ms. Scherzinger’s phenotype is definitely pretty much exactly what I have in mind as what my heroine looks like.
I’ve lost this actress’ name, but the below picture is a close approximation of my heroine’s appearance.
About what I imagine my heroine looks like as I write her.
Anyway, all of this is mental masturbation. I still have a long ways to go before I get anywhere near seeing the waking dreams of my novel on the big screen. But the story is really, really interesting and unexpected. The story isn’t nearly as dark as Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series. That kind of shit just isn’t my scene.
But I’ve made the overall story interesting enough that I think its possible that by the time the development and writing process is over, I’ll be within shouting distance of getting an agent and, in turn a book deal. Of course, by the time all that happens I’ll be so fucking old that, well, ugh.
While it’s clear that I’m so old now that I could just drop dead at any moment and all my dreams will be very moot, in general, here’s my vision for the six novels I’m working on.
My heroine looks like a younger version of Olivia Munn.
The point of the six novels is you will get to see, over the course of 25 years, the arc of all the characters first introduced in the first novel. The last two novels are meant to be something of an allegory for modern America but yet they will be good enough at face value that you will enjoy them for what they are: techno mystery-thrillers.
That’s the dream, the vision at least.
These six novels are meant to be the precursor to an open-ended series of novels about an American Lisbeth Salander-type character who goes on global missions doing all kinds of Mission:Impossible and James Bond type stuff. The dream is, if these first six novels are a success that I will have the resources to, say, have a novel set in Asia or some such.
I know I’m being both delusional and extremely ambitious, but, lulz, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. I need something, anything to keep me going, keeping me breathing and a project as ambitious as this is exactly what I’m looking for.
But, as I keep saying, I also want to work on a scifi novel as something of a backup.
It will be interesting to see if I can pull off my vision for the main character of the first novel in this six-novel project. She is the heart and soul of the project, but her position in each of the novels is different. She is definitely at the center of the first three novels, but the last three she’s isn’t the protagonist anymore. But I hope I create an interesting enough character that people will be invested in her fate enough to want to read all six novels.
The heroine of the first three novels is a really cool. She’s been a lot of fun to develop and I think I’ve come up with a number of interesting quirks to her personality that will draw the audience in, want to spend some time with her. She kind of looks, in my mind’s eye, like a young Olivia Munn. But there are any number of women with a similar phenotype who could play her well.
Things continue to move at a pretty fast clip at the moment with this novel. It may take me a few more days than I’d prefer, but no later than by the end of the week — I hope — I will be at the midpoint of the novel. Then I can start to work on the second half of the novel with an eye to how I’m going to edit the whole thing a few times before the Beta Reader process begins.
The heroine of the first novel in this projected six novel project in my mind kind of sorta looks like a younger version of Olivia Munn combined with a younger version of Nicole Scherzinger.
All I can say is, whomever is playing me in the simulation has gotten better. Or maybe I have a new user because things are really flowing with this novel. I feel a sense of urgency and focus that I have not felt before. I definitely feel more inclined to “shut up and write” than I have in the past.
The only reason why I keep writing and talking so much about this novel at this point is I’m 100% extroverted and I can’t help myself. Maybe when I make it big I will finally get the self-control to stop talking and writing about writing so much.
Anyway, yesterday, Saturday, I was feeling very restless so I went to a stripclub. It was very cathartic and even though it was VERY EXPENSIVE relative to how much money I have on hand for the month, it was totally worth it. And, really, that’s what makes going to a stripclub so appealing — I never feel cheated, even by the end of the visit I barely have enough money left to eat.
But one thing that happened has left me uneasy. It’s somewhat murky on an ethical basis and that makes it even more troublesome. I was talking to a very attractive young woman when I, in my infinite wisdom — told her she was my type — a “high yeller,” also known as a “rebone.”
Yikes, am I dumb when drunk sometimes.
The thing is, I feel queasy that I said these words, and, yet, I don’t honestly know if they’re all that offensive or not. I think it all depends on the context. Yes, I think I was a drunk idiot for using these terms, but in real terms, in the South at least, they’re usually seen as a dumb, somewhat comical method of describing an African American with light brown skin.
That doesn’t make me feel any better, though. I could totally get if the young woman had been offended. I just shouldn’t have said those words. I have to take the L on this one, I’m afraid.
Anyway, this reminds me of how over the course of six projected novels in this project I’ve managed to come up with two heroines who are “brown.” I have a hunch why this is the case, but, lulz, sometimes you just have to accept what you have to work with and move on. If anything, my dumb screw up with the stripper has given me pause for thought going forward whenever I’m asked how to describe my “brown” heroines.
I could totally see some well-meaning smug Twitter liberal freaking the fuck out if I slipped up and used either one of those terms to describe my “brown” heroines.
But, as I said, things are really moving fast at this point. I don’t know how much of this is I just turned 50 and I’m feeling some pressure to put up or shut up and how much of this comes from I just know the story so well that things are flowing a lot better.
As this novel begins to get better and better, I feel like I need to get a better grip on what my heroine looks like. And, at the moment, my heroine in my mind looks a lot like Olivia Munn.
Olivia Munn
It’s maybe not a one-to-one, but that’s the vibe I’m looking for in my mind. There are a few other AmerAsian women of the right age in Hollywood who I’m also thinking about as I write the character, but it’s Munn I keep coming back to over and over again.
In my imagination, the character looks like Olivia Munn but has a very Mare of Easttown vibe to her — in a way.
At least, that’s what I’m doing in my mind as I write this novel — I really have Mare of Easttown at the forefront of my mind as I work on this novel because the dynamic of the two stories is kind of sorta similar.
Sorta. Kinda.
Or, put another way, I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration from Mare of Easttown. So, at the moment, the novel (series) is a mixture of Stieg Larsson’s writing combined with Mare of Easttown.
Anyway, I’m growing nearly ecstatic as to how good things are going. I at least know how *I* develop and write a novel. I vacillate wildly between thinking absolutely no one will care about any of this no matter how hard I work to thinking I might — just might — have a chance pulling this off.
I saw on Twitter today where someone was articulating an idea that is pretty much my worst fear at the moment — they essentially said “thanks, but no thanks” to people like me writing novels with non-white characters in them. Or, more specifically “love interests.”
The heroine of the first three novels in my six novel project looks like of like the above — that is, Nicole Scherzinger.
Well, jokes on you guys, my HEROINE is a POC — or, more specifically, Amerasian.
Now, there is a very specific reason for why I did this which gradually snowballed into something really cool. I needed an excuse for a character to abscond to South Korea later on in the series and what better way to do it than to make his mother — who is the protagonist of the first three novels — Amerasian?
I made this strategic move being only vaguely aware that there would be people in the POC community who would be annoyed that a CIS white male such as myself would do such a thing. I just did what I felt was best for the story, not really thinking about the broader creative and societal issues at play.
There are a lot of different ways this might play out. One is — no one will care and I’m over thinking things. Two is, if this series becomes as big as I want it to, EVERYONE will care and I’ll face something akin to an American Dirt situation.
…or Maggie Q?
Now, one issue that I find myself thinking a lot about these days is marketability. Is there a chance that the very thing I think is a positive — the organic “representation” in the novel, will be seen as too “woke” by some and that, by definition, will turn them off? I hope not.
I am dubious of the whole idea of a work of art being too “woke,” attributing most of people’s quibbles to what they’re watching or reading sacrificing good storytelling for banging a message over the audience’s head. I’m watching Andor right now and even though it’s obviously got some elements to it that might be thought of as “woke,” it’s good enough that I don’t even notice it.
…or maybe Olivia Munn?
It’s just a story. An interesting story that is, unfortunately, taking me some time to get into.
Anyway, I totally validate the criticism of CIS white men “telling the stories” of POC. Ok, I get it. But I’m ornery and, as such, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. The framework of the story is really, really strong and now all I have to do is buckle down and wrap up the first novel.
I’m now formally sketching out again the “bad guys closing in” portion of this latest first draft attempt. And the thing I’ve noticed is the last time I did this I crammed a lot of big events right next to each other.
Olivia Munn is what I imagine the heroine of this first novel looking like..
The thing I’ve slowly getting the hang of is how you have to let your novel’s structure breathe a little bit. You need an ebb and flow to how things roll out so you have a big event, then a few scenes that reduce tension some and then repeat.
I’m still at a loss, in some respects, as to what makes up the investigation of the murder this novel is about. Thankfully, to date I’ve just had to distract myself and I’ve figured out how to move things along. I may have a lot — maybe a huge number — of faults, but usually when I find myself in a creative corner I’m able to weasel my way out of it and think of some new direction, some new angle to take that lets me keep going pretty quickly.
Actually, imagine Olivia Munn looking a little closer to this. Similar, but not exactly.
Really, at this point, the only issue I have is how many times I’ve done this. I’ve written and rewritten this first novel a number of times. But at least each new attempt has been significantly better than the one before. The key issue now is to try to wrap things up on a second draft by spring 2023 so I can turn around and begin querying during the autumn 2023 querying season.
One thing I’m still concerned about is this novel, while interesting, doesn’t have some of the jolting events that your usual modern thriller has. It’s just not scary (or brutal) in the way that the audience for such a genre pop novel might expect.
But I believe I can fix that particular issue in the second draft. The point of the first draft is just to get the story down pat so you can turn around, rewrite it and fix all the issues. I really have to stop daydreaming and just drifting towards my goal, however.
I’m really growing to like both the tactical beginning of the first novel I’m working on and the strategic beginning of this planned six novel project. The tactical beginning is strong because it opens with a huge question — why is this person in this situation?
What I imagine the protagonist of the first three novels in this six novel project looks like as I write.
It’s take me a very long time to stumble across this specific beginning and it could definitely still change. But, for the time being, I’m pleased with what I’ve managed to come up with. It is kind of embarrassing how many months I wasted with various other versions of this novel. And I like to think, at least, that if I had a wife or girlfriend maybe the process would have been sped up considerably.
Meanwhile, the strategic beginning is cool because there’s a lot — A LOT — of room for growing and development. I easily have six total novels I can map out if I try to sell this first novel, set 25 years ago. Everything is pretty sorted out in my mind, I just have to knock out the remaining five novels in the series (and beyond.)
Of course, a lot could go wrong. And they say if you’re querying your first novel, you need to be working on something else while you’re doing it. I’m not getting any younger and I really need to put up or shut up one way or another.
But, in general, the whole experience continues to a lot of fun — if a lot of hard work.
I’m just about to enter the third act of the first draft of the first novel in what is projected to be a five novel project. And occasionally, I will stop myself with the realization that I’ve come up with a damn good concept.
And at the core of this concept is an American interpretation of the Lisbeth Salander trope. In my imagination, as I write these five novels, the person who would play my take on the Lisbeth Salander trope would be Zendaya.
But it’s not a one-to-one comparison for various structural reasons. Yet my dream is each one of the books will build your interest in a character that looks a lot like Zendaya and invokes the same type of affinity as Lisbeth Salander. At least, that’s my goal.
I want these five novel project to be an old brown shoe for the existing audience of Stieg Larsson. But I have to note that I’m, by nature, not nearly as dark as he is in his writing. Yet I am really working hard to flesh out the characters and to make them people who are, if nothing else, interesting enough that you want to spend enough time with them to finish five ~100,000 word novels.
Because these novels deal with decades of events, you get to see on the page as it happens why my heroine in the later novels — the one I imagine looks like Zendaya — is so fucked up. That’s what makes these project so different than Larsson’s stuff — the backstory isn’t back story.
But, I have to admit, that this is a massive, massive project.
A lot could go wrong. And as I keep saying, I have no idea what I’m doing. So, it could be that I’m writing such crap that no matter amount of re-writing will get me close to being good enough to sell any of this.
But, in the end, all I got is my dream. Just getting a positive reception from anyone that might read the second draft of the first book. The idea that I would not only sell these novels, but they would be popular enough that Zendaya would play the central character would be beyond a life long dream come true.
And, what’s more, there is another character in the series that I imagine being played by Olivia Munn as an AmeriAsian version of the Mare of Easttown trope. In fact, that’s the core of the project — the relationship between an Olivia Munn type person and a Zendaya type person.
Anyway. I have a huge amount of work to do. The key thing is for me is to simply get the first book in the project done.
I’m feeling just about ready to start writing again on this first novel. The plot now has a nice symmetry to it and the ending both wraps up the story and gives a nice lead-in to the beginning of the next novel.
While I continue my pause in writing, I’m going to try to sketch out the plots of the other four novels as best I can. At the moment, most of the novels have a beginning and an end, but not much in the middle. The last two novels are the most thought out, but they also have way too much plot and i have to figure out a way to pare all that plot back some.
But I’m feeling a lot of hope because of how well the first novel’s plot is beginning to shape up. I have it in me to flesh out the other novels’ plots, I just have to be patient and believe in myself.
As I keep saying, the emotional core of these novels is one woman’s love for a young woman who grows up to be my personal interpolation of the Lisbeth Salander trope. You get to see, over the course of a series of novels, the major events that lead up to the motives of the young woman in the last two novels. I find the whole project very compelling.
At the moment, the woman at the heart of this project looks a lot like Olivia Munn in my imagination, while the young woman who grows up to be my personal hot take on the Lisbeth Salander trope looks a lot like Zendaya. But I’m really just daydreaming at this point. I’m a very visual person and if the learning curve for screenwriting wasn’t so difficult, I probably would have gone into screenwriting instead of novel writing.
Yet, of course, I’m not going to live forever. I really need to get something done. I can’t just keep daydreaming about finishing these five novels, I’m going to have to actually do it soon enough. Otherwise, I’ll just be a dude who died of a broken heart over a failed magazine for expats in Seoul.
And I simply refuse for that to be what people think of me, if I have it within my power to do so.
I really need to get back to work writing .And, yet, I also want to use this pause in my writing to psyche myself up and do some of the reading I’ve neglected to do over the course of this project’s existance.
At the moment, I have a lot of hope. But the clock is ticking.
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