THE COMPANION CHRONICLES AND THE CHALLENGE OF CREATING FICTION IN THIS TIMELINE...
I mean, real life is outstripping fiction... really.
Good morning, hope everyone is well and staying safe.
First, some news… a boxed set of the first three Companion novels will be available in a few days. Link here THE COMPANION CHRONICLES
If you don’t mind, please leave a review of the books. Reviews help so very much.
Those covers are by Todd Alcott, a former playwright, screenwriter, and graphic designer. You should check out his work on Etsy, it’s fantastic. Link HERE.
In addition to Todd, I’m so very grateful to the many folks who helped and encouraged me with regard to my novels. I am going to post a special thank you at the end, but this would not have happened without a community… community really, really matters.
It is a strange and unusual time in the world… particularly in America, the latter part of that sentence I would normally call nationalistic navel-gazing (too often many of my fellow citizens claim this to be the greatest nation in the world, but when I ask how many other nations they’ve been in, usually they cannot list a single one) but given the circumstances of the past five years, four of which where we had a former reality TV host as President who then lost reelection and ordered his followers to attack the US Capitol to stop the counting of the ballots… well, even my friends overseas have said, you Americans are really having an unusual time of it, aren’t you?
I distinctly remember when OJ murdered his wife, hopped into a white Ford Bronco, and led the police on a wild chase on the freeway and thinking, at the time, if I WROTE this as a spec, not one single producer would believe it.
Real-life outstripped fiction… and continues to do so to this day.
We had a plague descend upon the world, in the former President’s last year in office, the reality TV star and bankrupt real estate baron, and he downplayed it because it cramped his style, called it fake, called it mild, lied about nearly every aspect of it… and it’s killed nearly a million of us here in this nation. Then he lied about losing the election, too. But honestly, the lie that’s gone malignant and turned to cancer has been the vaccine one (but that doesn’t mean the election lie is benign, either).
And a sizeable chunk of us still buys into that cruel lie, sadly. I’m fortunate in that I have MD friends (writers collect experts in various fields, particularly medicine) and they’re astounded that no one trusts them when it comes to vaccines, but when people get sick, they STILL GO TO THE DOCTOR FOR HELP.
There’s a disconnect there… we’ve lost our sense of community and, to be honest, America’s community was born fractured and torn… we did fight a Civil War over it, in fact, and nearly all the fractures of today are tied into what that war was fought over. We’ve come together as a nation on certain things, but America’s sense of community has excluded others since we were birthed… when they are rightfully accepted, it infuriates a segment who benefited from that exclusion. So our community was always tenuous and imperfect, to be sure. But now it’s sorely being tested in ways that are, sadly, historic. I mean, a major party just tried to overthrow an election, they stormed the Capitol waving Confederate Flags, swastikas and signs bearing the former President’s name… vowing violence on his behalf, and following through on that violence… and in response, a whole lot of pundits are trying to tell us that we did not see what we plainly saw with our own eyes. They’re trying to tell us it was ANTIFA or BLM because, well, they don’t want to face the truth.
We’ve been torn asunder as a people desperately need to heal. But how? I don’t know the answer, honestly. I truly don’t. I know I’m feeling for those sick and dying and feel for the families they leave behind.
I also think that, given all the end of the world films and shows we’ve watched, none really catch up to the gross and absurd reality of what we are all witnessing.
In the 2011 film CONTAGION, the world is nearly decimated by a killer flu, only to be saved by a vaccine that EVERYONE HAPPILY ACCEPTS. Fade out. The end.
If the writer wrote that a third of the population wouldn’t believe in the vaccine and refused it, thus ensuring the pandemic would continue to kill people… no one in Hollywood would buy that (nor would the audience).
In the recent film DON’T LOOK UP, which is supposed to be a satire, it suffers in that its President, while also a dim former reality TV star who uses her child as chief of staff, is still far more competent than the one we had. It was hard to believe BECAUSE IT DIDN’T GO FAR ENOUGH.
And when she gives a speech exhorting her followers NOT TO LOOK UP at the comet coming to destroy our world… one of her red-hat followers does and renounces his loyalty to her.
Which, let’s face it, would not happen in OUR TIMELINE.
In fact, the former President has recently been pushing vaccines on his followers (after long downplaying them… which seems strange that he’s reversing himself, but the plain truth of the matter is, his voters are dying as a result). So NOW he’s trying to get them to get vaccinated and guess what’s happening?
They’re booing him. They’re not listening to his changed narrative. They’re refusing it. Yup. If I wrote that, I’d be kicked out of a studio meeting, but in real life, there’s no so thing as going too far with the satire.
But I don’t share this to write about politics… there are plenty who do that very well. In particular, I would highlight Jim Wright and his blog STONEKETTLE STATION, which you can read HERE. He’s a veteran and a fantastic writer on politics and policy, among other things (he’s a great photogragher, too) and I highly recommend.
I just find it fascinating from a writer’s POV how far folks are going with the narrative in their heads that they find more satisfying than, say, the truth.
It reminds me of Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM, where the pigs change the farm commandments from FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD to FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BETTER and few folks question it.
I think they’ve misplaced their loyalty, but that’s just my opinion. The community they’ve aligned with does not respect them, in my view, and many will eventually realize that and come around. I do believe that. I hope for it.
In the meantime, one of the best things you can do is be grateful for those around you who love, support and give you hope for the future. I am. I tell my sons I love them.
Find the folks you love and make sure they know how you feel. It helps them. And it will help you, too. And when someone’s been there for you, had your back when you needed it, make sure you tell them how grateful you are. It helps everyone.
That’s all for now, take care, friends. And also…
For my Companion novels, in particular, I thank the following people.
Mom, Dad, brother Stacy, Stephen King for On Writing (and other books, of course), Naomi Wallace, Ato Essandoh, Kevin Jacoby, Keith Link, Todd Alcott, Kristy Elam, Doan Trang, Chad Snopek, Ken Bowser, Marilyn Haft, Matthew Polly, Jim Wright, David Gerrold, Mike Nguyen Le, Scott Myers, Nate Davis, Martin Aguilera, Bill Rodemeyer, Kai Yu Wu, Dwayne Alexander Smith, Joel Eisenberg, Tess Rafferty, Yuri Lowenthal, William C. Martell, Chad Law, Daniel Keys Moran, Dawn Callan, Sambo Steve, Alex Ecklin, hell, all my dojo pals, members of the War Room, Julio Gagne, Carlos Sagan, Julio Rivera, Phillip Rhee, Tony Jaa, Mike Selby, Sam Lard & family, and, most importantly, Tomoko Naka and my two ninjas-in-training Kai & Ren Naka-James.