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Novel Development From Concept to Query - Welcome to Algonkian Author Connect
Haste is a Writer's Second Worst Enemy, Hubris Being the First
AND BAD ADVICE IS SECONDS BEHIND THEM BOTH... Welcome to Algonkian Author Connect (AAC). This is a literary and novel development website dedicated to educating aspiring authors in all genres. A majority of the separate forum sites are non-commercial (i.e., no relation to courses or events) and they will provide you with the best and most comprehensive guidance available online. You might well ask, for starters, what is the best approach for utilizing this website as efficiently as possible? If you are new to AAC, best to begin with our "Novel Writing on Edge" forum. Peruse the novel development and editorial topics arrayed before you, and once done, proceed to the more exclusive NWOE guide broken into three major sections.
In tandem, you will also benefit by perusing the review and development forums found below. Each one contains valuable content to guide you on a path to publication. Let AAC be your primary and tie-breaker source for realistic novel writing advice.
Your Primary and Tie-Breaking Source
For the record, our novel writing direction in all its forms derives not from the slapdash Internet dartboard (where you'll find a very poor ratio of good advice to bad), but solely from the time-tested works of great genre and literary authors as well as the advice of select professionals with proven track records. Click on "About Author Connect" to learn more about the mission, and on the AAC Development and Pitch Sitemap for a more detailed layout.
Btw, it's also advisable to learn from a "negative" by paying close attention to the forum that focuses on bad novel writing advice. Don't neglect. It's worth a close look, i.e, if you're truly serious about writing a good novel.
There are no great writers, only great rewriters.
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River of Immortal Souls - Adult Portal Fantasy (Chapter 1)
I have written a very rough first draft and have begun my first edit pass. OPENING SCENE - Introduces antagonist, setting, tone, and a foreshadows the primary conflict. CHAPTER 1 Some days the loss weighed more heavily on Eliana Richardson’s heart than others and she knew the minute she woke up that today was going to be a rough one. She sighed from her bed as she watched the overcast sky slowly darken and bright green maple leaves wave their greetings to the birds hungrily visiting the bird feeder through the slatted blinds. Josh, her twelve-year-old Golden Retriever and constant companion, rested his chin on the side of the bed and offered his usual morning bark. Eliana rubbed his head playfully, acknowledging that it was time to let Josh outside to do his business. Eliana rolled over and stared at the picture on her nightstand of her beautiful daughter, Deidre. Deidre would be turning seventeen in a few days – wherever she was. It had been almost ten years since her disappearance. As far as Paul was concerned, Diedre’s disappearance was all Eliana’s fault, and their daughter was dead. But Eliana knew Paul was wrong. Deidre was still alive. It was only a matter of time before her baby girl was back home where she belonged. And today marked a new beginning for Eliana. Today, though, she had to get up or she wasn’t going to make it to the lawyer’s office on time. Eliana sighed loudly and threw the covers back. “Enough of that, missy. We wouldn’t want to keep Paulson Saputo now, would we?” She forced herself to an upright position, swung her toned brown legs over the edge of the bed, and with determination planted her feet firmly on the carpet. She completed her morning routine in forty minutes. Checking her appearance in the full-length mirror in the bedroom, Eliana concluded that she was satisfactorily dressed to impress but decided to pull back some of the cornrows around her face and clipped them in place. She half tripped going downstairs, fed Josh, quickly filled her thermos with coffee, grabbed her keys and backpack, and ran out. Eliana drove down the pitted gravel road past the neighbor’s barn and turned onto the paved road at the stand of mailboxes. The drive to the divorce lawyer’s office took six minutes, and she had ten minutes to spare. The full import of this meeting hit her like a ton of bricks as Eliana built up the courage to open the car door. This was it. The last day of her marriage. Eliana didn’t want to admit failure, but there was nothing left of the life and hopes for the future she and Paul had once shared. It had been seven months since Paul had moved out. She hadn’t laid eyes on him since then, even though he was still living on the island with his pregnant fiancé. At first, she thought they’d be able to get past the pain of losing Deidre, but living with Paul’s contempt slowly eroded any possibility of moving on. Then the silence started and after a few years they avoided each other altogether. What had been the pride and joy of her existence, a happy and loving family, simply evaporated. All that was left to do was for them to finalize the last details of the divorce and sign the papers. Eliana checked in with the young woman behind the desk. “Hello. I’m Eliana Richardson. I’m here to meet with Mr. Droit.” She was sure that the girl had attended the high school and was grateful that the normal reminiscing didn’t start. “Yes. Mr. Droit should be out in a few minutes. Please feel free to take a seat. Can I get you any coffee, tea, water?” “Water would be lovely. Thanks. I’ve already had two cups of coffee this morning and you might have to call the paramedics if I had anymore caffeine today.” The receptionist smiled broadly and bounced out of her chair with the energy that only a person without a care in the world could have. Eliana took a seat in a small reception room while the receptionist stepped away to grab a bottle of water for her. Within a few minutes, Paul walked in. He’d gotten a bit heavier in the gut and his thinning hair was prematurely gray. His suit was uncharacteristically rumpled, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. His shoes, usually polished to military standards, were scuffed and caked with mud. The gorgeous athlete she’d married; the man who’d built a successful commercial real estate development company by the time he was thirty-eight, looked defeated and demoralized. Paul identified himself to the receptionist with a stutter that had never been there before. He seemed to shrink into himself a little when he finally made eye contact with Eliana and quickly looked away. He didn’t seem angry. He just looked empty. He took the chair furthest from Eliana and nodded his head nonchalantly in her direction like he was greeting a buddy at a football game. “Hey.” Eliana had wondered how she would react when she finally saw him after more than half a year. And she wasn’t sure what she expected. She felt a boxer in a ring circling the mat with the adversary, both trying to size up the opposition. They’d been married for almost two decades culminating in this sad set of circumstances, and she was furious that he’d thrown away everything they had worked to build. But she was determined, in spite of the anger, to maintain some level of civility. “Hey. How have you been?” “Okay” he said, not looking up. “Hmmm. And how’s… ah… Melissa, right?” The question sounded contrived even to her and she regretted asking the minute the question was out of her mouth even though she took a little pleasure when Paul flinched. “Yeah. Melissa’s okay, I guess.” There wasn’t much else to say so Eliana opted for an awkward silence and Paul followed suit. Eliana was very grateful when Frances Droit walked in the waiting area adding some relief to the pregnant moment. “Good morning, folks. Why don’t you come on back.” The attorney stood to the side holding the door into the ancillary conference room. Eliana was a little put off when Paul stepped in front of her and went through the door first. Mr. Droit seemed just as surprised as Eliana, offering a commiserating smile of apology. Paul plopped down into a chair on the opposite side of the room while Mr. Droit held the chair for Eliana before taking his own seat. “This shouldn’t take too long. I know Ms. Richardson needs to get over to the high school.” “We definitely wouldn’t want to keep anyone at the school waiting.” Mr. Droit raised his eyebrows but continued. “You both should have received the final divorce decree with the amendments we discussed in our last meeting. Unless there are any objections, we’ll get your signatures, and I’ll file the documents this afternoon.” Eliana looked at Paul sadly, once again taking in the full import of what was happening. When Paul didn’t respond, she took the lead. “I am satisfied with the terms indicated in the decree and I’m ready to sign. I’m also prepared to write Paul a check today to buy him out of the house as discussed.” “Paul, are you satisfied with the paperwork?” Paul shrugged noncommittally. “Yeah, sure.” Mr. Droit handed them both pens, called in the receptionist to serve as a witness and indicated where Eliana and Paul were to sign. The receptionist added her signature and Mr. Droit notarized the document. The receptionist made copies for everyone and within minutes Eliana followed her ex-husband out to the parking lot. Eliana took a deep breath and turned to face Paul who was already getting into his car. “That went much faster than I thought it would.” “Yeah. Guess so.” “I assume you’re planning on staying on the island.” “Probably.” “Well, I just want you to know that I’m moving on with my life and I have no interest in creating any drama.” “Appreciate that.” Paul started to get in his car and then changed his mind, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “So, uh, I’ve been thinking. You know the baby’s coming in about two months. I was thinking that maybe I could stop by and pick up some of Deidre’s stuff.” “Wow. Interesting day to ask.” “It’s not like I run into you these days and I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone.” “Well, bird or no, I don’t think that’s going to work for me. Sorry.” “Passive aggressive as always.” “And what’s that supposed to mean?” “It means you’re still the self-serving bitch we’ve all come to know.” “Alrighty then. You take care, Paul.” He seemed to grow in stature as he menacingly approached sneering at her. “What? Can’t handle the truth?” This was a side of Paul that she’d only seen once before when a man sitting on a park bench threatened to harm Deidre for throwing a ball that hit his leg. Deidre was three years old. With a heaving chest, Paul pulled the man up by his collar and promised to kill him if he even thought about touching his little girl. Eliana had no doubt that Paul meant what he said, and it took almost two hours for her to calm him down afterwards. Eliana recognized that blank stare and wasn’t interested in trying to talk Paul back down to earth. She jumped in her car and slammed the door, quickly engaging the locks. She started the engine and backed up to leave. With unbelievable speed, Paul rushed to the front of her car and pounded on the hood glaring at her through the windshield. Eliana was so startled by the suddenness of the reverberation from the impact and the level of vitriol that she froze. Spittle flew out of his mouth as he snarled at her with a shaking voice. “This is all your fault! You’re the one who destroyed us!” Every ounce of her was shaking uncontrollably as she gripped the steering wheel and slowly pulled forward. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she also refused to take any more abuse. He eventually stepped out of the way as her bumper pressed into his thighs. Eliana kept looking forward as she drove past, only glancing in her rearview mirror as she got close to the exit. Even from this distance she saw the raw pent-up hatred that he’d barely managed to conceal for years seething through his eyes. And for the first time in years she wasn’t intimidated by this man felt standing in the pouring rain, his fists balled up and his nostril flaring. It was only when a car horn blared that she remembered she was behind the wheel. Eliana slammed on her brakes, narrowly avoiding a collision. She took a cleansing breath, smiled ruefully at the startled driver and after checking both ways this time, she pulled away. Never again was she going to allow Paul to manipulate her or cause her to doubt herself. And regardless of what Paul thought or said, she wouldn’t stop looking for Deidre. Nothing would ever change that. Not Paul or the searing pain that felt like a hot poker beginning to burn its way from the center of her skull out between her eyes. -
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The Humanitarian Cookbook - Post-apocalyptic sci-fi - First 4 pages
OPENING SCENE - Introduces the protagonist, setting and tone, and foreshadows the primary conflict Chapter One Iggy followed an insistent Keandra down the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard, until they finally reached the man being crucified. She pointed up at him and said, “Look.” But Iggy was distracted by the crowd taking in the mid-day action. “There must be thirty people here,” he said, disbelieving. “Not one of which has recognized me, by the way.” He cast a grumpy look around at the dusty assemblage. They gathered in front of the charred remains of an eatery that had been burned to the ground decades before, payback for serving up so many lethal patties, nuggets and milkshakes. All that remained were blackened walls and those soaring golden arches that were occasionally used for a crucifixion or to hang a piñata. Keandra squinted against the sun reflecting off the remaining windows over at Mandalay Bay. “A man’s getting nailed up, and you’re talking about the size of his crowd.” “Nailing him? Nah.” This came from one of the two centurions doling out the punishment. He balanced atop an aluminum ladder while his safety-conscious compatriot braced it for him. “We use zap straps when it’s just a misdemeanor crucifixion.” A teenager in the crowd with a sunburnt nose and a nail-studded baseball bat asked, “What’d he even do?” “Card counting,” snapped the centurion on the ground. “Stealing from Caesar.” Centurions were half soldier, half mascot, in bulky, ancient body armor and motorcycle helmets. Their gear, even the rifles, was covered in faded, flaking gold paint. And a stencil of Caesar’s face smirked out from their chest plates. Of all the casino bosses in Vegas, Caesar had the worst reputation and the best branding. The one up the ladder clunked down to the ground. He left behind a painted cardboard sign hanging around the crucified man’s neck, with tidy painted lettering in, yes, gold. Keandra pointed it out for Iggy. “That’s why I came to get you.” The (alleged) card counter saw Iggy and Keandra peering up at him. He spoke with a voice that sounded thirsty and resigned, even more thirsty and resigned than people in Vegas usually sounded. “What’s it say?” Iggy read the sign aloud. “This Sunday. July 4th BBQ. Caesar’s Palace. Free food. Free booze… Special appearance by celebrity chef Iggy Wiggins.” He turned to the centurions and said, “I don’t understand. Why’s my name on it?” From their expressions, it was clear the centurions numbered among those who didn’t recognize Iggy. “Because I’m absolutely not working for Caesar.” Iggy Wiggins looked to Keandra, maybe for reassurance, or maybe to reassure her. “Never even met the man. For sure, he never asked me to cook at some barbecue for him.” “Caesar doesn’t ask,” said one of the centurions. “I would never…” Iggy shook his head at Keandra. Then read the sign again. “How many people you figure’d come out for something like that?” # Out there somewhere, it was a relentlessly sunny Las Vegas morning. But down here in Treasure Island’s nether regions, the only light came from the occasional LED bulb, powered by a trickle of electricity from geriatric solar panels on the hotel’s roof. Most of the resort’s juice went to what was really important, a quartet of Wheel of Fortune slot machines in the casino, but a few lights got the leftovers. Iggy was near the front of an early-morning lineup of his fellow Islanders. They collectively waited, chatting and bored, in the broad, echoing corridor outside the Nassau Conference Room. His next-door neighbor was right behind him in line. Reginald wasn’t a young man, but he still boasted those lean, muscled arms that everyone except Iggy seemed to have. “Next,” called a voice from inside the conference room. The person at the front of the line hurried in, and everyone shuffled forward a step. Reginald said, “Hope we didn’t keep you up last night.” Iggy thought about denying it, but only for a moment. “Yeah, isn’t she pregnant enough?” “Yvette’s birthday’s coming up fast,” Reginald said. “Wants a party. Like being old and married to me is something to celebrate.” “I heard that.” Yvette eased into line beside her husband. Her red onesie pajamas stretched nervously over her hugely pregnant belly, looking like they might burst a button with every teetering step. “Peeing in this thing is no joke.” “Next!” The voice beckoned again from inside, luring in another from the waiting line. Iggy would be up next. He mouthed his usual silent prayer he wouldn’t pick elevator. Reginald said, “So this party. Can we ask you something?” Iggy lit up. “For my neighbors? Of course. How many invited? And I always suggest finger food, so you don’t have to bring up all that water to wash dishes.” Yvette and Reginald shared a glance, and she said, “We just need to borrow your chairs. You have four of them, doncha?” “Oh. You don’t want me to cook,” Iggy said. “Most of our people haven’t been in Vegas too long,” Reginald said. “You’re not really a thing to them.” “Of course not,” Iggy said tightly. “Next!” Iggy’s turn. He left the hallway to pace across the cavernous, almost empty conference room. A folding table holding a wire bingo cage full of numbered balls waited for him, along with the Scrum Master. She perched behind the table, a well-preserved older woman in a billowy, white silk shirt. Pirate-style. Rumors were rife she had a thing going with the boss of Treasure Island, Captain Stubing. And that’s why she got to be in here every morning doling out grueling tasks to the other residents, while she sat in a comfortable chair with ample lumbar support. With eyes shut, Iggy poked a hand into the metal basket and pulled out a ball. ‘Casino bartender – day shift’. It would be a tedious twelve hours, but at least he wouldn’t be in the basement, tug-o-warring an elevator up and down all day. The Scrum Master inspected the ball then scribbled his job for the day on a sticker, right under where it said, ‘Hello my name is’. She gave it to him and said, “Bell desk. One hour.” The neighbor couple got on the same elevator to head back upstairs. Reginald couldn’t hide his grin. “Croupier! Something that isn’t garbage-related…” Yvette was pleased, too. “She says I’m too pregnant for Service, finally. She said she doesn’t want my water breaking all over the customers.” Yvette put both hands on the stretched flannel. “And once the baby comes, I get to roll to see how many weeks of mat leave I get!” They arrived back to their floor after an unusually jaunty elevator ride. A young kid, flush-faced and out of breath, waited outside Iggy’s door. He was a newspaper delivery orphan, dressed in yellow neon from head to toe. The paper had adopted the recognizable, high-visibility gear after a few accidental shootings during early morning deliveries. These incidents had been a problem ever since ‘Stand your ground’ was officially adopted as one of the church’s 19 Commandamendments. When the neon-clad boy spotted them, he spoke up. “Message for Iggy Wiggins. You’re him, right?” Iggy nodded. He could see Reginald and Yvette pause outside their next-door room to eavesdrop. “Manali wants to see you down at The Tribune right away.” Iggy’s brain lurched forward an excited gear or two. “What about? Did she say?” “Nope.” The kid turned and hurried away down the hall, calling out every few yards, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Right away. Iggy turned to Reginald and Yvette, moved towards them. “Of course, you can borrow my chairs. I just need a tiny favor. Just until I get back from this meeting. I have to go right away, you heard.” Yvette looked down at the sticker as Iggy stuck it on her pregnant stomach: ‘Hello my name is Casino bartender.’ She started to say, “But what if my water-“ Iggy called back over his shoulder as he hurried away. “And I’ll cater your party, too. No charge.” Reginald said, “We don’t need-” “No charge!” -
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Write to Pitch 2024 - June
FIRST ASSIGNMENT: Write your story statement. “Join an order of mythical warriors just in time to meet the reason why the world believes they are only a legend.” SECOND ASSIGNMENT: In 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them. Alizar comes from the oldest bloodline in the world of Dais. His kind was gifted with unending life… if they chose to live peacefully. Now he seeks to counterfeit the longevity he lost through any means necessary. There are several things that could stand in his way. He’s destroyed most of them. His greatest threat is an order of warriors that is almost extinct. So he’s sending an army to make it so. THIRD ASSIGNMENT: Create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed). A LIGHT INTO DARKNESS THE PALLADIUM FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: Develop two smart comparables for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre. Who compares to you? And why? Comps: “Uprooted” - Naomi Novik BECAUSE: Genre, Hero’s Journey, Setting, Demographic Readers, Ease of read, Character dynamics, Character growth “The Demon Awakens” - RA Salvatore BECAUSE: Genre, Hero’s Journey, Setting, Epic Quest, Worldbuilding, Cliffhanger (sequels) X and Y: “Uprooted by Naomi Novik, only it’s a boy becoming a fantasy-jedi-monk instead of a witch.” FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: Write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above. Though you may not have one now, keep in mind this is a great developmental tool. In other words, you best begin focusing on this if you're serious about commercial publication. Hook line: “A boy sets out to become one of the legendary warriors the world believes are myth just in time to meet the forces pursuing their extinction.” SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction. Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it? Elias is just a boy from a fishing village. All his life his favorite thing has been collecting the stories and legends from all over the world from the fishermen that come to port in his village. He loves them all, but especially the ones about the warriors called “Palladium”. They say the greatest Palladium acolytes only take three years to be forged into one of the legendary warriors. When Elias goes to become a palladium the villains from the same legends he loves arrive in one. The master Palladium who train the acolytes are affected by a malaise. The world believes the Palladium are either extinct or just a legend. The masters have begun to resign to that fate. Elias must navigate the treacherous life of a student learning from masters who believe they are already defeated. Luckily Elias isn’t the only acolyte seeking to become a Palladium. Suva has been there already for several years, slowly reinvigorating the light inside the Palladium masters. Just when Suva and Elias are able to express their feelings for one another Suva finishes her training and must return home to tend to the reason she became a Palladium in the first place. SEVENTH ASSIGNMENT: sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend, and be aggressive with it. The world of Dais exists under a great firmament – an invisible wall that separates the world from the heavens. The people have discovered a magic where they sublimate precious metal, turning it into a gas that rises to the firmament where it reforms as the precious metal, clinging to the invisible wall. While precious metals can still be mined, it’s now more practical for prospectors to predict when and where the metal will fall from the heavens back to the earth. The sublimation magic may seem available to everyone – but in practice it’s available to the wealthy. Kings now use their armies to roam abroad, fighting for territory they predict the precious metals will land in. This cataclysmic shift in priorities for rulers has changed the world dramatically. Before the sublimation magic there were four ancient kingdoms. Now there are just tenuous alliances between bellicose warlords. The protagonist loves the stories now considered just legends from the times before the sublimation magic. Stories of the Virtu kings: the Lions of the West. Or the slate-black monsters called “salari”, avarice incarnate. But most of all – the warriors who wield the light of god in their crystalline daggers – the Palladium. The Palladium are forged on a secret island in the greatest ocean. Only one man on one boat can make it to the Shining Isle. In old times he would travel the coast, stopping at guarded shrines where the prospective acolytes would gather hoping to prove their mettle and be granted passage to the island. The Shining Isle is a utopia for warriors, craftsmen, and monks. A volcanic atoll formed the grounds to train the greatest warriors in the world. The island is singularly abundant with the best resources and facilities to make artifacts fit for legends. And beneath it all is a secret very few have ever seen. -
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The Cruise Diaries: A memoir of a cruise ship videographer; New Adult Fiction, romance
I have my whole book written and edited, but I'm excited to work on it more during the conference. First two pages of book: Part 1 October 30th, 2019: Fort Lauderdale My eyes trail around the crew bar as I take another swig of my Johnny Walker scotch. Who is going to be the chosen boy tonight? On my final night of my contract? Tyla has been throwing “thirsty eyes” at me all night. He probably expects it since we've been seeing each other on and off for three months and it's our last night on this ship. He's headed for London and I'm going home to Virginia. But... no. Tyla's not exciting enough. This is my last night. I take another sloppy swig out of the bottle in my hand as my eyes continue to scan. Where is Justin? He doesn’t even show up for my leaver’s night? My last night on ships? We’d had a couple nights together and I was hopeful this would be our last… …That little flirt is probably on his next conquest. He is such a charming Dutch boy… and those dimples… “Hey.” I turn around. Dani. Lena’s boyfriend. A forbidden “no-no.” The photography power couple on our ship are notorious for their corridor fights where Lena yells Ukrainian profanity at him, as he bellows back defensively in his deep Zimbabwean vibrato. But she went home for vacation, and I don’t even know their relationship status. I look into his deep, preying eyes. I knew this was going to happen. I could feel it ever since he came onboard to join her on the ship; touching my hand in the photo gallery as she turned her head, whispering in my ear in the back of the gallery in a predatory manner. He grabs the bottle of Johnny Walker from my hand and takes a sip, his eyes still on me. I hold his gaze. I’m too tipsy to look and see who is around, too tired from my six month contract to feel emotions of right or wrong. I’m just following this euphoric feeling of intense attention. The bar is a blur to me now. “Follow me,” he says, darkly. He walks out the bar and I smoothly follow behind him. I leave all my friends, the party they threw me, the piñata I still had to hit, all the normal fun that should satisfy me, everything; because this is “ship-life” and I can always up the stakes. He snakes me through the corridors to his cabin and I follow in search of forbidden fruit. Even though I know it might be rotten, I feel like I need to taste it to find out. The last night of my last contract keeps replaying in my head as I find myself walking the ship gangway with my luggage for the fourth time, expecting this to be my home for the next six months. I look up at the vessel, noticing the Bermuda flag perched in the back, a lofty reminder of the amount of money the company saves each year on paying taxes and proper employee wages that would be required if they were flagged in the USA. The sinking feeling in my stomach erupts with hardening nausea. I can’t believe I am here again. -
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Write to Pitch 2024 - June
FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement. Katya: Track down her brother in order to return home together. James: Solve his spiraling caseload (as a means of not dealing with his personal problems) SECOND ASSIGNMENT: in 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them. Castri Gangs: Obstructing James and Katya’s goals are the myriad gangs of Arx Castra, who always maintain the status quo of their own power, punish deviance, and uphold their image, even if it means murder. These gangs are entrenched institutions, acting as community pillars, balancing the ambitions of both the aristocracy and corporations. Engaging a gang on equal footing requires institutional backing, leaving our protagonists with an uphill battle. Dimitri Novak: Dimitri’s main goal is survival, and unbeknownst to the protagonists, all their cases lead back to him. Dimitri, a longtime Kozlova syndicate manager, oversees their girls. He is known as uniquely vicious and guarded, even for the Kozlova, on account of being the only elf on staff. When his boss orders him to entrap the husband of a rival gang’s boss, Dimitri knows it’s a no-win situation. Whether he complies, does nothing, or whistle blows, the consequence is death. Dimitri complies to buy time and finds a genuine friend in his mark, sharing his deepest and most dangerous secrets. Their friendship sparks a reactionary chain, where Dimitri will kill to protect what he’s gained. THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed). · Current working Title: Two-Faced Lovers · The Violent Type · Love is a Losing Game FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: Develop two smart comparables for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre. Who compares to you? And why? Lev Ac Rosen’s Lavender House Both a mystery with a queer detective. Also focuses on found family, uses the culture/environment as a hostile character, and has similar themes of identity, suicidality, and community. Ben Aaronovitch’s Amongst our Weapons (Rivers of London) for its inclusive cast, humor, and fantasy-crime genre mash-up. Tonally it feels similar, the city is also a character. FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above. Though you may not have one now, keep in mind this is a great developmental tool. In other words, you best begin focusing on this if you're serious about commercial publication. TFL (Mystery/Fantasy): An impulsive young woman teams up with a struggling detective to track down her missing twin through a dangerous, fantastical, and violent city. SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it? Katya inner conflict Context: Katya and her twin, Alexi, have just graduated college. They have been inseparable since forever, yet for the first time he’s leaving her for a tech job in California to navigate life on her own. His loss happens earlier than expected when he goes missing during their last summer together in the Adirondacks. Katya’s search lands her in the fantastical city of Arx Castra, where she must learn to live without Alexi, in order to find him. Inner Conflict: Katya is anxious, terrified, and furious about losing her brother, and is impulsive in her pursuit of him. She suppresses the feelings of fear, anxiety, and sadness, and instead focuses on the tasks in front of her. She is reactive when they are not focused on her case, and she wants to cut corners or rush the work that needs to happen to find Alexi - which leads to complications. She needs to slow down, give her emotions space and be more methodical. Secondary Conflict: Katya’s gets a lead on her brother, but because of her impatience, and tendency to rush into things - she loses the lead, which forces her to address some of the issue. She also gets herself into trouble because of her impulsiveness, which strains her relationship to James, and puts her in danger. James Context: James is a military vet, and Castri native, who despite spending most of his life deployed to Aeonia, takes a forced retirement and returns home where he joins his sister at her detective Agency. Within six months, she kills herself, leaving him alone in a city he doesn’t feel at home in any longer. His lover steals his savings and disappears - leaving him at a lifelime low and with a laundry list of problems to address. Inner Conflict: Unfortunately, James doesn’t want to talk about his problems or his past. He’s isolated, depressed, and without purpose. Refusing to ask for help, and stubbornly prideful, he insists on toughing everything out himself. He refuses to acknowledge his struggle and can’t concede that he might actually need help. Secondary Conflict: James’ pride gets his main case derailed when he refuses to humble himself and work things out with the Union, who claim he owes them money. His problematic all-or-nothing approach gets his building damaged, and nearly kills him, leaving him unable to continue on his cases. FINAL ASSIGNMENT: sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend, and be aggressive with it. Arx Castra is the setting – and a city that is a character of its own. It’s like a lockbox or a honeycomb. Some people feel safe in the angles and corridors that can’t seem to stay the same, while some people feel dogged by it. James’ agency sits at the edge of two culturally distinct districts, and everywhere that he and Katya go - it’s a negotiation with the culture of the community they step into. For Katya - it’s reminiscent of New York, but far more intense. For James, it’s difficult to step outside. Both of them have to navigate the different architecture, cultures, and expectations of the spaces they pass through, and try to survive it unscathed. -
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Border Cross
Prologue (foreshadows protagonist) 1995 So dry was the air that she began to wonder if she’d be better off holding her breath. Its stillness belied the abundance of life that somehow survived here. Thrived here. This desert teemed with life, even while inhospitably threatening it. On top of that was the human threat, maybe worst of all. How, she wondered, could such a place bring forth a living thing. She blinked slowly through drops of sweat, fighting unconsciousness. Her last, nearly empty water bottle, lying on its side just out of reach, seemed to mock her. Its insubstantial, crinkly plastic a symbol of this entire journey. She didn’t even know where she was. Between here and there. Somewhere between where she had been and where she had hoped to be. Somewhere between a decision and a seething, feverish dream. She peered through splayed fingers at the afternoon sun. It felt closer than the hard, shingly ground now digging into her other hand, her spine and her bare backside. She’d heard gringos call it “unforgiving,” this place, this crossing. No man’s land. Did she need forgiving? As she screamed in pain and caught a delirious glimpse of the tiny, bloody head emerging from within her, she thought maybe so. I’m sorry, she wanted to say. This isn’t what I wanted. For you. For me. But her stinging, sandpaper tongue was too swollen to form words. So all she heard were her own wretched, primordial moans. Just before sunset, the high-pitched wailing cut through the heat like cool water slowly slaking a parched throat. It came from across the creek bed. The small group of men and women traveling north on foot instinctively followed it. The women among them recognized it. Were drawn to it. The crying grew louder as they left the well-worn trail. During their long journey from Colombia, they had encountered seemingly impassable obstacles. Strange and horrific sights and sounds and tragedy, particularly in the Darién Gap. Fellow-migrants in desperate need. Or worse. It took them nearly half an hour to descend the crumbly limestone bluff and then navigate ocotillo, prickly pear and cholla constantly grabbed at their arms, legs and clothes. The young woman was naked from the waist down. She lay face-up, her back propped against a boulder. Her slack arms rested around the infant, its tiny body covered in dried, dust-covered blood and teetering on its mother’s lap. The bluish-white umbilical cord still attached. One woman immediately reached for the child while another felt for a pulse in the mother, first at her wrist, then her neck. She shook her head. Using a small knife that one of the men had carried, the first woman cut the umbilical cord. She gently cleaned the infant using water from a plastic jug. She wrapped it loosely in a light blanket and strapped it to her chest. As they left, the other woman bent down and carefully removed a delicate chain from around the mother’s neck. There was no time to be shocked. They continued on their way. The next morning, fifty miles north, a call was made to a local woman. A newborn had been left at the small hospital ER. Would she be willing to care for it until authorities could coordinate with a state adoption agency? Where did the child come from? she asked. We don’t know. The woman knew what this meant. Bring the child to me, she said. CHAPTER ONE (Introduces protagonist and setting and foreshadows first plot point, primary conflict and primary internal conflict.) Terra hoisted the heavy red gasoline canister to her lips and took a swig. “The only thing that ran out of gas is your bullshit story,” she said, her sparkling black eyes trained on him. The young man cuffed to the barbed-wire cattle fence dripped with sweat, despite the fact that clouds had been blocking the sun for the past few hours. He looked ridiculous out here, Terra thought, with his pristine white hoodie and his high wave of stiff slicked-back hair. The hardy foliage and rugged black bark of the massive ebony tree behind him added to the absurdity. Its olive leaves danced in the wind that seemed to be picking up as the afternoon kicked in. The young man’s attempt to flee on foot had been taxing and short-lived. He was nursing a fast-rising lump on his forehead from striking the fence post after an overly ambitious attempt to evade capture. In her six months as a deputy sheriff for Cutler County, Texas, Terra had already learned that you never knew what or who you’d find while on routine patrol—including gasoline cans repurposed as giant water jugs. “How many are you expecting? Where’s the stash house? Who’s your contact?” The man spit, but his mouth was too dry, so most of it dropped near his shoes. He couldn’t be more than twenty, not that much younger than Terra herself. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. Like I said, I drove down to hike Closed Canyon trail and see the river. It’s flowing pretty good.” “You always drive a twelve-passenger van to go hiking?” She looked at his feet. “And wear Vans? Interesting choice of water bottles, too.” She tossed the canister. “Especially considering you’re nowhere near Closed Canyon.” “Well, you sure as hell don’t look like a Flynn,” he sneered, trying to look tough as he nodded toward the name tag pinned to her khaki uniform shirt. “Or like a fuckin’ Texas sheriff or whatever. More like some tight little indigenous Meh-hee-cana babe.” He raised his eyebrows and let out a laugh. “But no way are you from around here.” That stung, for reasons she barely understood. You know nothing about where I’m from! she wanted to shout. Hell, she hardly knew herself. “You’d be surprised,” she said. The police radio from her F-150 crackled. “Terra…Terra, you read me?” She walked to the truck and grabbed the mic. “I read you, Sheriff.” “Border Patrol needs our help. A group of illegals east of your location. Gunshots heard. Border Patrol says that the illegals were caught in the turf war between Zetas and Jaliscos. Last seen headed your way—or trying to. Southwest corner of Zino Ranch. I’ll text you coordinates. Get over there fast, but do it slowly, if you know what I mean. Ronnie and I are still in Hades, dealing with the shit-show at that goddamn church. We’ll head your way ASAP.” “Roger that, Sheriff. I’ve got their ride cuffed. He’s not going anywhere. I’ll head east, hugging the river as long as I can.” “And Terra. Bring your rifle.” She drove fast for ten minutes along a rutty gravel track, her ponytail bobbing up and down to the rhythm of small rocks pinging against the wheel wells and undercarriage. She slowed down to negotiate a sharp turn-off into roadless open ranch land. She jerked the wheel left and right, weaving the pickup around juniper, blackbrush and creosote while keeping an eye on her GPS app. To her right the Rio Grande wound its way in and out of view, blocked by sand dunes and by larger mesquite trees and the dense, puffy golden bloom of huisache. The light precipitation earlier helped keep down the amount of dust kicked up by her wheels, minimizing the chance of her being spotted by anyone scoping out law enforcement on either side of the river. As the terrain became rockier, she slowed down until the rock rose abruptly in front of her. She slammed on the brakes and got out. After grabbing her mini binoculars and Camelback, she slung her rifle over her shoulder. Wasting no time, she scaled the rocky slope, some 70 feet high, making quick work of its steep rise and jagged outcroppings. Just short of the top, she crouched behind a boulder and scanned the landscape. The wispy clouds had dispersed as a breeze picked up, leaving behind a nearly unbroken expanse of turquoise. A pair of hawks rode the thermals before slowly dropping out of sight in the Chihuahuan wilderness to the south. From up here, especially at this time of year, one could begin to appreciate the Rio Grande’s serpentine elegance and robust greenish brown current. Just over 300 feet at its widest point, here it spanned closer to half of that, making it intermittently and unpredictably deeper and more perilous. Across the river, set into a rocky cliff that afforded panoramic views of the winding river below, she could just make out a primitive hut, erected of small and medium-sized stones. A cartel lookout post. Found along the border, these were well-provisioned shelters manned round-the-clock by spotters whose job was to guard cartel territory, monitor the movements of coyotes and migrants and keep tabs on U.S. Border Patrol and law enforcement. She could see a single opening, a small window without glass, strategically situated to afford the occupant a broad vista. Slightly protruding from the opening she could make out the shiny barrel of a gun. She watched that barrel over the next several seconds through her binoculars. It pivoted gradually, almost meditatively, from west to east along a horizontal line, as if tracking a target below. It reminded Terra of a stalker undressing a woman with his eyes as he contemplates the perfect moment to pounce on the object of its leering. She looked where it seemed to be pointed, at first with the binocs, then with her naked eye. Below her a dozen people spurted recklessly in no particular direction, their faces taut with panic. Vague sounds of distress reached her across the breeze. Shit, Terra thought. Exactly the kind of chaos she hated about the border. She preferred straightforward law enforcement in accordance with a criminal code. Investigating crimes, apprehending suspects, making arrests, enforcing court orders. Clear-cut stuff that you could get your mind around. Scenes like the one below she found sad but frustrating. Even annoying. Who was in charge? Whose jurisdiction is it? Who are the good guys and bad guys? Which parties are on which side of which country’s laws? Too many gray areas and no clear answers. A shot rang out. A group of three, lugging bags and water jugs, hugged the base of the rock face, scattering like ants. A few others darted back and forth among the sparse riverbank brush. Some could barely run, reluctant to abandon their meager belongings or provisions. A few, having already crossed the river at a shallower point, disappeared from her line of sight. One among the fleeing appeared to be laboring to move at all. With the binocs Terra could see a patch of shiny bright red on his left side. The man stumbled along the southern riverbank. She looked toward the hut. Another shot. This time she saw the muzzle flash before she heard the crack. It echoed back and forth between the steep rock faces on either side of the river. The wounded man, hit again, this time in the shoulder, tumbled down the gently sloping riverbank. His limp body smacked the water with surprisingly little splash, then disappeared. His blood-red backside bobbed to the surface. In half a minute he was lost from view. Terra looked up in time to see a man walking quickly away from the hut on foot, rifle in hand. Headed away from the river, he disappeared. He must have hit his target, a coyote for a rival cartel, and was headed for another hut. He probably wouldn’t be back for awhile. Probably. The question was what could, and should, she do now? No fucking idea, she thought. She came into this job to enforce federal, state and county law. Right and wrong were anything but fuzzy concepts to her. As military police this distinction, this clarity, was never in question. She saw no reason why the transition to deputy sheriff shouldn’t be seamless. The law was a set of regulations, set down in writing, beyond dispute. She liked that. A lot. What she didn’t like was this. Illegals, migrants, chaos, lawlessness, flouting of laws. She grew up believing a border meant something. Boundaries matter. Where was the border? What even constitutes the border? Is this it? The Rio Grande? Yes and no. Not so simple. Thinking there may be more wounded or injured, Terra bounded down the rocky slope like a mountain goat. She pushed through thick brush that gave way to sand, in which she could make out indistinct footprints and bits of torn clothing. As she kicked aside an empty red gasoline canister, she imagined the despair someone might feel at this point along a northward journey, having lugged such a heavy canister of water all this way and then depleted it. They were a long way from the next chance for water, let alone whatever destination they had in mind. The audacity of it appalled her. Gutted her. She emerged from the low dune, past a a small but obvious cairn, a common sight in the borderlands, marking a northward trail. As she slid down to the river, taking in the scene at ground level, it seemed oddly familiar, though she’d never been here. From somewhere within the river’s whooshing meander came a dreamlike memory as indistinct as the sandy footprints. Or was it foreboding? She turned left, keeping a vigilant eye on the hut. No sign of the rifle or shooter. A faint cry of distress wafted over the low rush of water. Were there more wounded? injured? Was it a trap set by the cartel? She scanned the opposite bank. The people she’d seen earlier were nowhere in sight. To her east the riverbank narrowed on both sides and gave way to a steep canyon that cut a perpendicular path to the north and south, bisected by the river. She checked her GPS and her topo map. Her portable radio crackled to life. “Terra, where are you?” “I think it’s called Black Canyon.” “I know the place. What’s your plan?” “Best guess, a cartel guy took out a rival coyote. He’s laying low. There may be more wounded or injured across the river. What do you advise?” “Focus on the shooter. Stay in a sheltered position and keep an eye out for him ‘til we get there. Maybe twenty minutes. If he fires in your direction, defend yourself. Otherwise, sit tight.” “And the illegals? Like I said, there may be injuries. Or worse.” The line was silent for several seconds. “Jeezum Christ, I feel for the bastards, too, Terra. But they got themselves into this. Besides, more ‘n likely some of ‘em are goddamn miracle seekers making a beeline for Holy Angels. Adding to the shit-show. Ain’t our responsibility anyway. And you’re no good to me if you’re shot. Bottom line: don’t try too hard.” She heard another echoing cry. It came from the area near Black Canyon. “Roger that, Sheriff.” Everything was a shit-show with him. Hell, was his daily shit a shit-show? She promptly dismissed that image. He’d misunderstood her. Sure, she felt for these hapless migrants. Who wouldn’t? But her job didn’t include making herself an easy target for some sniper. She’d dealt with plenty of them in Kandahar and the nearby Sulaiman Mountains. The only taste she had for bodily harm these days involved rock climbing and the gym. She heard another cry, more distinct this time. From high above her. She looked, shielding her eyes from the sun. A hundred feet up the opening of Black Canyon, overlooking the river, a woman teetered on a barely perceptible ledge. Stray strands of long, dark hair fluttered across her face in the light wind. Beneath those ruffling strands her eyes, even from this distance, were shimmering black pools of terror and uncertainty. A small child swaddled to her chest, she had her back pressed against the rock. The woman had frozen. Terra stopped breathing. In the moment before instinct propelled her to help the woman and child, a feeling washed over her. Like the one a few minutes earlier, but much stronger. A stirring of recognition akin to déjà vu but laden with dread. Was it the woman? Her small child? The terrain? Terra started breathing again. And felt her feet carrying her. With urgency. Two other migrants had tried to help but had gotten no further than ten feet up. One was a boy of about twelve, dripping wet. A series of numbers scrawled on his arm marked him as an unaccompanied minor. The phone number of an older relative in Oaxaca or Guatemala City or Chicago. Someone to call if he made it through. Or if he didn’t. The ink had started to run, the result of hiding and hunching in the water for some time, Terra surmised. Before she even heard him pleading with her—“Man was shooting. She try to escape. You can help? Please?”—Terra had already unloaded and dropped her rifle, tossed the binoculars and begun assessing the quickest route up the nearly vertical face. Though it offered plenty of small outcroppings and jagged handholds, Terra knew that limestone readily crumbled. Nonetheless, ten minutes’ efficient scrambling brought her nearly halfway to the woman. Though in her element, Terra relied as much on adrenaline as experience or skill. Every few minutes she would call out to the woman: I’m on my way…It’s going to be all right...Está bien. Soon she stood about twenty feet below and at an angle to the woman and had her in sight. She seemed to be adjusting the child in the makeshift wraparound cloth carrier. Terra could see bits of rock cascading down as the woman adjusted her precarious position. “No te muevas. Try not to move,” she told her in an upbeat tone that masked her growing concern. The child seemed in distress, and its mother naturally wanted to soothe it. The thin ledge offered little margin for error, however, meaning that the slightest slip could be disastrous. “Almost there,” Terra said after another five minutes of climbing. Then she heard crunching gravel followed by a woman’s scream. She looked up and over in time to see the child tumbling down beyond the reach of the mother’s outstretched arms. “NO!” she cried out. Terra watched in dread as the child fell past her, oblivious and unimpeded, its tiny arms extended as it slowly rotated in the air. Then came the surreal thump of the body smacking the firm, sandy ground below. It rolled twice, then came to a stop. Hearing no sound from the motionless body, the mother began to wail. Her right foot had slipped off the edge. She had instinctively grabbed the nearest protruding rock, which somehow held, allowing her to remain on the ledge in a squatting position. “Terra! What the hell you doing?” came the sheriff’s voice from below and upriver. “A child fell!” Terra barked. “Find her!” “Got her!” called out Deputy Ronnie Criss a moment later. He had run up from the other direction. She knew she’d catch hell from Welter. She knew she violated regulations. Normally, she would have been the first one to question the judgment of anyone doing what she was doing. What had gotten into her? What was her excuse? All she knew is that this wasn’t normal. Nothing about the borderlands was normal. It was its own crazy space, an alternate reality with its own set of rules that were not rules. The opposite of everything she knew about law enforcement and everything she wanted to believe about humanity. None of that mattered at the moment, against the backdrop of the mother’s weeping. Terra forced herself to block it all out, push down the lump in her throat, as she’d learned to do. “Look at me!” Terra called. Look at me!” Louder this time. The woman remained awkwardly squatting on the ledge, her back to the rock. Face smeared with dust and desperation. Frantic eyes peered over and down to where Terra was ascending the final distance between them. “I’m going to get you down,” she said in a calm monotone. “I promise. And your baby will be fine. Está bien. Prometo. But I need you to take a deep breath. Respiración profunda.” A few minutes later, she squatted beside the woman and put an arm around her. She could understand the woman’s terror. From where they stood, more than a hundred feet up a steep rock face, the exposure was real. Anyone but an experienced climber would be hard pressed to function, let alone stay calm and move fluidly to safety. She could also imagine how the woman must have ended up here, fleeing for her life, thinking she was moving to safety and before she knew it finding herself and her child stuck and paralyzed. But where the distressed and now grief-stricken woman saw no escape, no way back, Terra did. “I’m Terra,” she said. “¿Cómo te llamas?” She managed to say, “Isabella….Isa.” “Okay, Isa, you’re going to be fine. I promise. You and I are going to walk to the bottom.” “Mi niña,” she sputtered. “Yes, we’ll find your baby. Juntos. Together.” Over the next thirty minutes of coaxing, assisting and on occasion supporting the woman’s entire body-weight, Terra guided them to the bottom. Isa rushed to take the child from Deputy Criss. He said he had made several attempts to get her to swallow some sips of water from his canteen but wasn’t sure she had taken any. The little girl was breathing, but unconscious. Sheriff Welter, who had his rifle in hand, said that he had seen no human activity, including at the cartel lookout hut. He had called Cutler County Hospital and that they were standing by. He looked at Terra. “The MedEvac copter is on another call, so you and the mother follow me and Ronnie. We’re parked by your truck. If we push it, we should be able to get there in half an hour.” As they were rushing down the river and back over the dune to the vehicles, Welter pulled Terra aside. “God damn it, Terra, why’d you do that? Endangering yourself, leaving yourself vulnerable. And for what?” He shook his head. “You gotta get your head right.” She nodded. She knew he was right. But she wasn’t sure she had been wrong. Three hours later, Isa’s daughter lay safely in the ICU, hooked up to a heart rate monitor. Her mother sat beside her bed with one hand on the little girl’s and the other clutching something. Noticing Terra watching through the glass, Isa, her face lined with worry, held up a tattered photo of a man. She mouthed the words, “la cruz milagrosa.” The miracle cross. Was it meant as a question or an affirmation? Terra couldn’t say. Before she could respond, two nurses entered the room and began speaking with Isa. As Terra and Ronnie walked to their vehicles, he exclaimed, “Damn, Terra! That was some badass heroic shit today! Hands all scraped and bloodied and you didn’t even notice! I was pretty much choked up from the moment I saw that little girl. You got some kind o’ steel in your, well, you know.” He grinned. “Just sayin’, you may be small but you’re ballsy. And strong as hell!” His excitement was lost on Terra. Her mind had gone nearly numb. She may have mustered a polite grin. She couldn’t say. When Terra got home that night, she hugged her black lab, Gitter, then filled his dish. As he devoured his food, she lay on the kitchen floor beside him, spreadeagled and staring at the ceiling. After a minute, something began to well up in her. It started in her gut and made its way to her throat, like a rattlesnake bite working its way through her body. Before she knew it, she heard herself sobbing. After trying to choke back the sobs, she eventually gave in to them, curling up in a ball. Ten minutes later, after the crying stopped, she noticed that she was clasping the small cross that hung from her neck. Somewhere within Gitter’s crunching and the sting of her bloody hands and the image of the frightened, free-falling baby, Terra became aware that the vague sense of foreboding she’d felt earlier that afternoon remained a shapeless presence within her. A distant thunder rumbling steadily closer. -
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The Early Vampire Novel The Vampyre, was Falsely Attributed to Lord Byron
One night in the rainy summer of 1816, at Lord Byron’s summer estate, Villa Diodati, in Cologny, near Geneva, Switzerland, Byron, and his friends Percy and Mary Shelley passed the time by telling ghost stories. The stories they created would lay the groundwork for future, publishable works. Perhaps most notable among these contributions was Mary Shelley’s, which she would turn into her opus Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus and publish approximately two years later. This tale—of the assemblage of several of the Romantic movement’s most significant writers, all brainstorming hallmark contributions against the dreary, sublime backdrop of a stormy summer night—is specifically referenced in the preface to Frankenstein, which was written as Mary Shelley by her husband. “Two other friends,” Percy Shelley wrote of this night, after setting the scene: “(a tale from the pen of one of whom would be far more acceptable to the public than any thing I can ever hope to produce) and myself agreed to write each a story, founded on some supernatural occurrence.” The two friends, explains by D.L. MacDonald and Kathleen Scherf’s footnote in the Broadview critical edition of the novel, are certainly Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Percy’s idea from that evening became, scholars believe, his “Fragment of a Ghost Story” (1816), and Byron’s idea was a spooky and inventive story about a vampire. However, there was at least another guest there, that night—one who is left out of Shelley’s recapitulation, likely because he was unknown as a writer. This is Byron’s physician-in-residence, John William Polidori, who contributed a concept that would later become his novel Ernest’s Berchtold; or the Modern Oedipus. But this novel not his most notable literary achievement, however—Polidori wound up expanding Byron’s vampire concept (several paragraphs of which Byron had actually written), churning out his own different short work on the same topic, entitled The Vampyre, that same summer. Polidori left Cologny in September of that year, and left his manuscript with his friend Countess Catherine Bruce, who lived nearby. Two years later, a London publisher named Henry Colburn received a manuscript in the mail, containing “outlines” of several stories—the gothic exercises developed and written by Byron’s houseguests in Cologny, and, apparently Polidori’s whole manuscript. Bibliographer Henry R. Viets, who comprehensively researched the publication history of Polidori’s text, claims that it is unknown how this material precisely arrived in Colburn’s possession. The outline for Frankenstein was in this bundle, but it had already been published, so Coulburn discarded it, and instead published, in his periodical called New Monthly Magazine, The Vampyre, attributing authorship to Lord Byron. He arranged for publication of the story as a book, shortly after. Polidori was shocked, upon seeing The Vampyre published, and under Byron’s name. Byron denied writing it, but it almost too late—the story (in the magazine) was a triumphant success, and at least one literary edition was on its way. Polidori began writing letters to the necessary parties to properly claim authorship, and soon, the edition which was already in the works from Sherwood, Neely, and Jones was published without Byron’s name—but without Polidori’s also. This is the edition of the text of Polidori’s The Vampyre that I first encountered in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University. But Byron’s nebulous attachment to The Vampyre lived on. This anonymous edition of The Vampyre teased possible authorship by Byron (and if not, definitely affiliation with Byron) through its paratextual matter—namely an “Extract of a Letter to the Editor” in the front, which rehashes the gothic origin story told by Percy Shelley in the Preface to his wife’s book, and offers an explanation as to how this bundle of stories from this fateful night in Geneva came to be published; the unnamed “editor” simply says, “I obtained them as a great favor, and herewith forward them to you.” And the edition also features a piece by Bryon himself, an “Extract of a Letter, Containing an Account of Lord Byron’s Residence in the Island of Mitylene” in the back. Assuming the text had been written by Byron and publishing it with paratexts that augment this is one matter—but deliberately concealing the true author while loading Byron into the frontmatter and backmatter is another, entirely. The Byron-heavy paratexts in The Vampyre, as well as the one in Frankenstein, treat Byron’s name as a brand—as a desirable label accounting for quality, and mastery of the genre at hand. The text comes to rely exclusively on these paratexts, when no author is listed. This book, however, treated “Mary Shelley” as a brand, too, in light of the publication of Frankenstein. The end of “Extract of a Letter to the Editor,” lists the names of the Romanticists who brainstormed ghost stories; upon listing that Mary Shelley (as “Miss M.W. Godwin”—her name at the time) contributed a tale, this edition drops a footnote stating “since published under the title of Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus.” The Vampyre is in extra-good company, this footnote stresses. But this footnote also suggests another brand which further links thematically the paratexts in The Vampyre and Frankenstein—with a brand of teamwork, of Romantic collaboration. The texts produced that night are not most significant because they are independent products of some of the greatest writers of this significant literary movement, or because they can be associated with the great literary celebrity Byron, but because they were developed alongside one another—in accordance with the ideals of the Romantic movement, namely, inspiration. The Vampyre tells the story of a young man named Aubrey—wistful, thoughtful, susceptible to wild fancies, and ever-appreciative of the beauty he sees around him—who befriends the rakish and enigmatic Lord Ruthven, who has a habit of making conquests of young women. Only after Aubrey travels to Greece, and his love, the beautiful (and knowledgeable about otherworldly creatures) Ianthe, is murdered by a vampire, does he begin to wonder if his friend is a monster—and he has this confirmed when Lord Ruthven is murdered by brigands, but nonetheless reemerges in Aubrey’s life a year later with a new name and the intent to marry Aubrey’s sister. The novel’s backmatter, the “Extract of a Letter, Containing an Account of Lord Byron’s Residence in the Island of Mitylene,” in addition to name-dropping “Byron” again, seems to play upon The Vampyre’s Greek setting—continuing the eerie romance of the Eastern Mediterranean world even after Polidori’s story has ended. Many of The Vampyre’s characteristics suggest a deliberate attempt to recall another notable brand—that of Gothic/romanticism, in general. The “Introduction” to Polidori’s text is a historical survey of vampirism, citing several “historical” accounts of the subject as well as Romantic, literary acknowledgements—such as Byron’s poem “The Giaour” (a huge except of which is reprinted in this section), and Robert Southey’s poem “Thalaba.” The historical evidence helps ground the story of The Vampyre in spooky possibility, while the Romantic connections associate the story further with the conventions and ideologies of the genre. View the full article -
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On the Internet, We’re All Unreliable Narrators
For a long time, if someone would have asked me how I decide which parts of my life and work to share on the internet, I would have responded with a shrug. I don’t think about it too much, I might have said, or maybe: I just try to be honest. I genuinely thought I was telling the truth. By the time I graduated from college and started my first job as a fashion editor, sharing snippets of my day and thoughts via Instagram was second-nature, something I did without thinking much about it at all. Or at least that’s what I would have said. The truth, though, is that for most of my 10+ years sharing online, every post and Instagram story and video was filtered through a very specific lens. Is this real enough? I would ask myself before posting. Is this relatable enough? I entered adulthood in a time when influencers were first entering the spotlight and the most insightful thing experts seemed to be able to say about social media is that the perceived perfection of it all was an illusion. We were all looking at a highlight reel and interpreting it as the whole picture of someone’s life. It’s why we were depressed, insecure, and anxious. I never wanted to be part of that. If I was going to share, I would share it all, I decided. For years, this served me well. I built a small, supportive audience. The worst thing I could imagine someone saying about what I posted is that it wasn’t real at all. That it was forced or fake. That I was. And so, I posted every off-the-cuff, silly story and every unfiltered bathing suit photo with the knowledge that yes, it was me — my personality, my body, my honest perspective — but also that it was a puzzle piece of a larger image. I lived for the high of someone telling me that I was the only “real” influencer they followed. I got a rush of adrenaline every time someone commented “this is why I follow you” or “so relatable.” I felt like I was being rewarded for being myself, for being brave enough to be honest in a world of fake influencers with faces and bodies and lives FaceTuned into oblivion. I would never look like that, I thought, so at least I had this. I could be relatable. I could be funny. I could be myself, or at least a version of it. Every tiny moment and every photo I shared was a single brushstroke in the portrait I was painting of someone who was relatable and honest. I would choose every color and then step back and admire it proudly, making the same mistake as everyone else. I confused it with the real thing. The truth I know now is that the internet only facilitates performance. Everyone is an unreliable narrator. You can perform perfection, presenting a highlight reel to the world, and you can perform imperfection or authenticity in the very same way. Neither option is real. Neither option is you or me. These days, I approach social media with three “rules” in mind: I am honest, I am kind, and it is not in my power to make every person believe either of those things. It’s a conclusion I largely came to during the process of writing my debut novel Such a Bad Influence, a story about a child influencer who grows up (online) and then goes missing as an adult. As both a reader and a writer, I’ve always been drawn to psychological thrillers and the way they allow for an exploration of ugly and uncomfortable truths. The more I wrote about how to navigate social media as both a creator and a consumer, the more I realized the hypocrisy inherent in existing online. I began to accept that maybe I was just as unreliable a narrator in my own, very “real” internet presence as anyone else. I finally stopped trying to win at authenticity. It can feel a bit cynical, maybe, to boil down the entirety of the internet as fake or forced. Depressing, maybe. But for me, there’s been a kind of freedom in realizing that I can never be real enough on the internet. I know now that there is no protection that comes from baring your soul online and buffing away the rough edges, molding yourself into something hyperpalatable. I know now that if anyone says the person they are on Instagram or TikTok is the real, true, unedited them, then they’re lying. I don’t expect anyone to be the same person in real life than they are online. I look for validation in different places. When you know that you can’t curate a better, funnier, more likable version of yourself no matter how hard you try, it feels a little bit like meeting yourself for the first time. And the only person who has to believe they’re honest or real or likable is you. *** View the full article -
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In Memory Of Thuglit, The Lit Mag You Should Have Read
I was sitting in the back of an auditorium two years ago, listening to S.A. Cosby ruminate on the beginnings of his since gone thermonuclear writing career, when he mentioned a magazine that had escaped my mind for too long. Cosby was heaping praise on one of the first places he was published. Thuglit, the long defunct New York City magazine that was once a haven for gritty, ugly, nasty imaginations, a name I would have hoped meant something to the room full of avowed thriller fans. The shoutout drew a cheer from me. And maybe two others. I was annoyed about the lack of reaction then. I’m still kind of annoyed about it now. Because to hear Cosby tell it, those people might not have been buying his books without Thuglit in the first place. “I think in the future people in the writing world at large, and the crime writing world in particular, will realize just how revolutionary and important Thuglit was. Most people’s current favorite crime writer first got published there, but more than that, Thuglit gave us misfits and us loose cannons and all of us who live, creatively, in a world of darkness and shadow a place to tell our stories,” Cosby said. “I definitely wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if not for Thuglit.” For the better part of 11 years, the self-described “best damn crime fiction on the planet” was published largely on the relentlessness of Todd Robinson, a Bostonian lost in New York City, author, bartender, heavily tattooed punk rock Dad and tireless advocate for writers who wanted to publish crime fiction with dirt and blood under its fingernails. Thuglit was the launching pad for some of the biggest names in crime fiction these days. It got hyped by Chuck Palahniuk. It not so secretly doubled as a talent scout for a big-time literary agent. It went from being self-published to having an anthology deal with Kensington! And then it was gone. And it shouldn’t be forgotten. At one time, Thuglit had a reputation as your favorite crime author’s favorite crime magazine. Placing a story there was a badge of honor: I still remember running out of the L.A Times newsroom, beyond ecstatic, when I found out I made the cut for the final issue of Thuglit in 2016. But I’ve always felt like the mag and Robinson never got the obituary they deserved, and when I started sending flares to some of Thuglit’s heaviest hitters, they agreed. So here it is, an overdue goodbye to the magazine you’ve maybe never heard of that jumpstarted the careers of several people whom you certainly have. ## Visualize the character of someone who goes by “Big Daddy Thug,” and your mind’s eye would probably draw an approximation of Todd Robinson. A bear of a man whose voice sounds like a cement mixer that smoked unfiltereds and caught a head cold, Robinson’s the nicest person you’d never want to fight. He spent chunks of our interview for this piece giving me genuinely great parenting advice, between strings of four-letter words. When Robinson founded Thuglit in the mid-2000s, he said he “didn’t have a bucket to shit in or a window to throw it out of.” An avid reader with no editorial experience, he was armed only with a desire to see more stories in the vein of Elmore Leonard and Andrew Vachhs and extreme frustration with what he saw as an antiquated market for crime-focused short fiction. “The main thing that lit the fire under my ass was I was at Bouchercon at a short story panel. I got into it with a couple of editors from Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen,” he said. “Look at the fucking names. Alfred Hitchcock, not a fucking novelist, not a writer. But here we are.” Robinson said those magazines, at least at that time, catered to what he called “Murder She Wrote pastiches.” They didn’t show the ugliness of crime, the craters it can leave behind on a person or a city. “I was fighting to bring the same level of realism to short stories as The Wire was doing as The Shield was doing,” he said. “Yet the same people who were watching those shows clutched their pearls on the page. And I don’t get that disconnect.” Someone at the panel suggested Robinson start his own magazine. So, he did. Robinson admits he knew next to nothing about publishing – it would take years before Thuglit even had print issues – but he knew the blood crusted space he wanted to fill in the short story market. Crime stories that were “unpleasant,” that shook people out of their comfort zones, of the worlds they understood. It wouldn’t be long until he got one, a story titled “Johnny Cash Is Dead” from a guy named Jordan Harper. Back then, Harper was working as a music critic. Thuglit was the first place he ever published a story. Nowadays, you might recognize Harper as the author of the Edgar-award winning She Rides Shotgun, which is now being made into a movie starring Taron Edgerton, and the co-showrunner on the TV adaptation of Ed Brubaker’s Criminal comic books. “I read that story and went this is why I’m doing this magazine,” Robinson said of Harper’s first offering. Even as it gained popularity, Thuglit was a labor of love by a staff of two. Robinson says he’d often print out submissions and review them by hand while on the subway to one of his bartending gigs. If things got slow at Shade – the tiny, dimly-lit West Village bar where Robinson works that became a part of Thuglit’s lore as a space where some of its authors also performed live readings – Robinson says he broke out pages there. His ex-wife, Allison Glasgow, functioned as acquisitions editor, culling Thuglit’s ever swelling submissions pile and also copy-editing stories. While Todd’s name is synonymous with the mag – his e-mail address is still Thuglit related – Glasgow “does not get nearly enough credit,” he says. It was inside Shade where Robinson first met another future big-time author who would become a regular offender on Thuglit’s pages. Two of Rob Hart’s last three novels have been optioned for film, but on the night he walked into a launch party for Robinson’s debut novel The Hard Bounce, Hart said he was a “scared little baby writer” trying to figure it all out. “I think I had one published short story—and so everything in publishing to me felt like an ivory tower. And with Todd it just wasn’t,” Hart said. “So, I sent him a story and he published it and I went to the bar to collect the money he paid for the story and I put it right back into two rounds of Bulleit Rye. We’ve been best buds ever since.” Robinson’s ability to spot talent is “unparallelled,” said Hart, who described Thuglit as the magazine that launched “a thousand ships.” At one point, Robinson said Thuglit became popular enough that a “powerful agent” started subsidizing the magazine so he could read issues early and scout talent. Robinson declined to name the agent, but sources close to the guy writing this article can confirm the first time an agent decided to pay any attention to me, it was because they contacted Todd about my piece in Thuglit: Last Writes. Hilary Davidson – the Anthony-Award winning author of The Damage Done – is one of those “thousand ships” that Hart referenced. She found Thuglit in 2007 while shopping her first piece of fiction and running into constant rejections. The story, “Anniversary,” about “an obsessed man making dinner for the object of his affections,” quickly resonated with Robinson, she said. “’Anniversary’ opened so many doors for me. It ended up in a best-of-the-year collection and got me my agent, which led directly to my first book deal. This sounds hilarious in retrospect, but I felt like that should make it easier to get my fiction published. It didn’t. I kept on getting rejections, except from Todd,” she said. “Thuglit ended up publishing not only my first short story, but my second and third as well … I collected a bunch of Thuglit T-shirts. I still treasure them. A few years ago, when I put together a collection of short fiction, I dedicated the book to Todd. I really do owe him.” One of Robinson’s few rules – especially as the submissions started piling up – was that he wouldn’t workshop a story with a writer. It was either ready for primetime, or it wasn’t. He only ever made one exception. For a writer from Virginia named S.A. Cosby. “Cosby came in with such a fucking fiery raw talent that I threw everything out the window to work with him on his stuff, because he was just so good,” Robinson said. “I think I’m almost as happy as he is at his success.” Cosby – who famously quit his job at a hardware store and bet on himself to write his breakout novel Blacktop Wasteland – said the story he submitted was a mess in part because he was relying on free computer software to crank out pieces at the time. “The first story I submitted was called ‘The Rat And The Cobra’ about two brothers and an inheritance in rural Virginia. When I wrote it I was too broke to get [Microsoft] Word so I was using a free computer program that made it difficult for Todd to format or edit it. But instead of tossing it in the trash he worked with me, encouraging me to get a professional writing program because in his words ‘you got a lot of talent but nobody is gonna go through this cheap software to get to the story,’” Cosby said. “Which was ironic because Todd saw something in me and did go through the cheap software to help me. I will never be able to thank him enough.” When I think of Thuglit, I think of Lookout Records, the independent California label that released Green Day’s first two albums. A one-man shop run out of one room in the 1980s, operated by Larry Livermore, a guy who just wanted to elevate music he liked that wasn’t getting play elsewhere. But unlike Livermore, who was long able to dine out on the royalties of Green Day’s pre-Dookie efforts, Robinson’s reward is better measured in reputation. While Thuglit won a wheelbarrow full of awards and Robinson’s name draws near universal love in the crime fiction community – the last time I mentioned Thuglit among a group of authors, several bemoaned that they “weren’t around for it” – it never became profitable. By 2016, he said “sales were going down and going down … two more issues and I’m paying out of pocket. I’m serving fucking Espresso Martinis to pay a writer for my magazine.” Robinson’s own writing career has been equally hard luck. The publishers of both novels in his highly entertaining Boo & Junior series have since gone out of business, and there is no hiding the frustration in his voice when talking about his publishing misadventures. But that won’t keep a good thug down. Because no matter how many times the publishing industry screws with Todd Robinson, it can’t take away the influence he’s had on that industry. “One thing I don’t think people truly understand about the pride I have stemming from the magazine is how much the success of the writers means to me. It might not be my own personal success, but I fought for over a decade and a half to prove that there was a place for the type of voices in fiction that they write,” he said. “‘I told you so,’ is always a fun phrase to throw out into the world when you can back it the fuck up.” View the full article -
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Madeline Claire Franklin: I’m Tired of Talking About Sexual Assault
When I started writing The Wilderness of Girls—a young adult novel about a pack of feral girls thrust into civilization and the troubled teenager who rescues them—I told myself this book isn’t going to include sexual assault. I knew in my gut, my feral girls wouldn’t have to deal with that. It’s not part of their mystery, even if they were all kidnapped by a man who called himself Mother and may or may not have been a prophet (or a madman). But aside from my knowing, there was also resistance. While this book was written to express some pretty difficult feelings about growing up female in America, I was tired of thinking about sexual assault. After all, I’ve been thinking about sexual trauma in one way or another since I was a teen myself. I’d also seen SA handled so badly in books. In early 2000s Young Adult fiction, one used to see SA used as a meet-cute fairly frequently…and then never mentioned again for the rest of the book. Additionally, SA is notoriously overused—gratuitously and graphically—in fiction written by men, under the guise of “realism,” or as a trite backstory to explain why a woman is so “badass.” These stories rarely address the long-lasting psychological effects of sexual assault, how SA affects relationships of all different dynamics, or how a victim moves in the world after the fact. By the time I started writing The Wilderness of Girls I had seen SA done so poorly, so often, I forgot it could be done well. I forgot how important it was to see it done well, especially as a survivor. But it took a long time for me to accept that SA was a part of the story I was trying to tell, I started drafting this book in 2015, just after my divorce was finalized–a divorce that happened in no small part because of my ex’s lack of understanding of consent or coercion (not to paint him as a monster—I believe he was genuinely ignorant). Shortly thereafter, I learned that Brock Turner was handed down his wrist-slap of a sentence after witnesses caught him violating an unconscious woman behind a dumpster (a woman named Chanel Miller, who would go on to write Know My Name, a memoir about her experience.) Then in 2016, I watched with bated breath as the US held a historic presidential election with the first female Democratic presidential nominee against a total buffoon who had just been thoroughly exposed as a proud sexual predator through the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tapes. And then I mourned when that sexual predator won. There was solace in the fact that he did not win the popular vote, but still: over 61,000,000 people looked at an eminently qualified, intelligent, experienced woman, and a reality TV star who does not see women as human, and said, “I choose that guy.” It was a mass traumatizing event. Every woman I have spoken to about that election night and the days after gets the same bird-bright look in her eyes, haunted and cautious and so very, very angry—a grief so huge, even eight years later, that we are barely, now, finding the words to articulate it. We trusted that our fellow Americans cared enough about women to not elect a known sexual predator to the highest office in the land, and they showed us we were wrong. For four years we had to listen to his word salad and watch his smug face as he blamed everyone but himself for every single problem that occurred under his administration. For many of us, it was impossible to even hear or see him–we had to turn off the TV or radio if he came on. I installed a browser extension that changed his photo to a picture of kittens. I was genuinely triggered by his presence, my body entering a state of fight or flight even at the sight of a political cartoon that too-correctly captured the sneering shape of his mouth. In the middle of his term in 2018, I watched, numb with rage and disbelief, as the same drama played out once again: Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court even after the clear, sensible testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford. Even after his rage-crying response to her allegations. Once again, American women were shown that the violation of our bodies is not a dealbreaker when it comes to putting and keeping men in power. I’d started out not wanting to write a book explicitly about sexual assault, and yet, over the years, I realized that my debut novel was inextricably tied to SA. The news and world events repeatedly showed me that our world has not heard enough stories about SA, no matter how tired I was of thinking about it. The society my feral girls are ushered into quickly tries to tame them into “good girls,” setting rules and enforcing expectations that leave the wild girls too confused and exhausted to fight back. Our main character (the non-feral) Rhi becomes keenly aware of what’s happening because she has lived through it herself: the conditioning, taming, shaping, grooming. Seeing it happen to the wild girls, who are old enough to question these things, helps her identify the traumatic experiences in her own life–how Western civilization’s traditional socialization of girls affected her late mother’s choices, her stepmother’s, and her own–all of which shaped Rhi into, essentially, the (almost) perfect victim. Once I finally accepted the role of SA in this book, Rhi’s character unlocked for me, and the rest of the book flew out of me like a howl I hadn’t known I’d been holding back. This April, for Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I was asked to participate in a panel called Outspoken: The Importance of Representation of SA in YA, along with fellow YA authors Kim DeRose, Rocky Callen, Hannah Sawyerr, and Annie Cardi, and moderated by Vicky Pietrus of Rise! A Feminist Book Project. We discussed how and why it’s important to have realistic depictions of SA and SA victims in books written for teens, best practices to avoid falling into voyeurism, and self-care practices as authors. And while I was—and am—genuinely tired of talking about sexual assault, it was an honor to share and discuss such a hard subject. A little over a week after that panel, I learned that Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction was overturned by a New York appeals court because the judge felt there had been too much testimony in regard to sexual assaults Weinstein committed that were not related to the specific sexual assault case he was on trial for. Never mind that sexual assault is notoriously difficult to prove unless it is violent. Never mind that while those character witnesses might not have been plaintiffs, their experiences were relevant to the proceedings. Overturning the conviction was a huge step back for victims of SA. And it was, to put it mildly, disappointing. Then, in early May, I—along with the rest of the world—heard the testimony from Stormy Daniels against Donald Trump, describing what millions of women have recognized as sexual assault (even if Ms. Daniels did not call it that). The power dynamic, the aggression, the way he blocked the door—so many people saw themselves in her story and knew it for what it was: a man abusing his power, making a woman feel too unsafe to fight back or say no. And yet many people heard her testimony and said, “she didn’t say ‘no,’ so it’s not rape.” And this is why we have to keep talking about sexual assault. We have to keep writing stories that unpack the psychological damage SA causes, the conditions that lead to SA being so prevalent in our culture, the way our educational system fails us in sex ed, how purity culture, patriarchy, and ingrained and institutionalized misogyny continue to fuel an epidemic of sexual assault in homes, on college campuses, in the armed forces, and in every industry where men historically have more power than women. So many people are carrying shame and trauma that was never theirs to hold. I wanted to write a different essay for this article, about how our culture is ripe for stories about feral girls and monstrous femininity (which is true, and not unrelated). I was determined to write that essay, because I am so tired of talking and thinking about sexual assault. But the Brock Turners and Bret Kavanaughs and Donald Trumps of the world have proven repeatedly: the conversation about sexual assault is far from over. So I’ll shut up about it when we no longer have anything to discuss. *** View the full article
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