I’m currently working (slowly but surely!) on organizing and prettying up the first draft of my third novel, and I love it.

My very first novel did not find a lot of enthusiasm among agents, despite the public’s ceaseless enthusiasm for time travel. Ah well. I started writing it as the ultimate exercise in escapism back in 2015, during my workaholic years. With lots (and I mean lots) of delays and procrastination, I didn’t actually finish it till August 2023. I’m in the process of submitting it to small presses that don’t require agents, as well as planting seeds of my novel’s narrative universe in multiple short stories that I sell to magazines. (I call it… the Lilyverse! (Well, almost. Not quite.))

My second novel is currently on sub with several publishers: that was the one that got me my very own literary agent, and it was based loosely on my rather strange childhood in a very strange country… Only with far more science fiction elements. Publishing is a very slow industry, with a lot of its procedures and customs still stuck in the 19th century and not at all adapted to the 21st. So it goes.

And the third novel, the one I’m working on now, combines two of my biggest hobby horses: aliens and anthropology. It has two alternating points of view, as well as many interludes politely poached (with acknowledgments and citations and all) from real-life news agencies, magazines, and academic papers. (And needless to say, researched with my own human brain. To hell with the sloppers who use AI for that, be they hobbyists or A-listers.)

Honestly, to me these non-fiction interludes are the most fun part of the entire process. Each of my novels blends fact and fiction, taking the weirdest parts of our consensus reality (so weird that they don’t seem true) and providing wild, out-of-the-blue explanations for them (so wild that they might just be true!).

In another life, I may have pursued my academic journey beyond a simple BA degree. But alas, there was an incident involving a very old, very tenured professor during a mandatory capstone course shortly before a big election… If I hadn’t been so naive at that age, I could have sued that entire university and paid off my student loans — and then some. But I wasn’t, so I didn’t, so here I am, toying with data and having altogether too much fun by exploring so many wild and different viewpoints.

I’d prepared and sorted most of that reference material months ago, when I had more time for sporadic research than for actual writing, though I believe just about anything can count as writing. And now, after finishing the actual narrative part of my first draft, I finally get to play with all those fun little excerpts, combining them to amplify the plot, to make my future readers wonder, “Wait, what? How? Huh… So, what if…”

To me, that is the best part of the process. I’ll miss it dearly once it’s done.