THOUGHTS ON WHAT COMES NEXT

Now that I have more or less completed The Devine Trilogy, I’m facing the question that writers dread the most: “What are you gonna do next?”

The answer almost every writer wants to give to this question is: “Isn’t it enough that I finished the damn thing and got it published? What else do you want from me?” But most writers are too polite, and too introverted, to give that response.

Fortunately, or unfortunately (I can’t make up my mind on that point), I have two other manuscripts taking up disc space in my computer. I worked on those while I tried unsuccessfully, for several years, to get a publisher or agent interested in the Devine novels. I’d written the first two books in that series, and the first chapter of the third, before deciding to move on to something different.

The first non-Devine manuscript is a dystopian thriller set in what I regard as an all-too-believable near future. The second is a historical mystery about a real crime that occurred in the 1920s. To my mind, the latter book has more commercial appeal. So, of course, I’ve turned my attention to the dystopian thriller.

Late last year I saw both “One Battle After Another” and the latest installment in the “Knives Out’ series. While neither movie was perfect, I admired the way they addressed the all-too-fraught current moment we’re all enduring. I want to be part of that conversation, and I believe the dystopian thriller puts me there.

Dystopian books are never about the future — they’re about the present, and about how failing to acknowledge the various elephants rampaging in the room can lead to catastrophe. I got the idea for the book in 2022, while I was reading “The Handmaid’s Tale.” I’d never read the book until then because I always considered its premise far-fetched. Then the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs decision.

I realize Margaret Atwood’s book is a classic, and there was much I liked about it, but I was irked by the passivity of the protagonist, Offred. I think I know why Atwood portrayed her that way, but I regarded her kick-ass friend Moira as far more interesting, and found myself wondering what the book would have been like if she’d been the main character.

After reading “The Handmaid’s Tale,” I went on a dystopian novel binge: “The Man in the High Castle,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “Darkness at Noon,” and, of course, “1984.” (I’d read “The Road” a few years back, and admired it; I read “Brave New World” a long time ago, and hated it.)

Those classic portrayals of dystopia gave me ideas for how to approach my imaginary future. I wrote a draft pretty quickly, by my standards, then put it aside because I hoped sanity would return to the world. I should have known better. The viruses of hate and intolerance are infecting humanity and threatening to overwhelm it, so I looked at the manuscript again after I completed The Devine Trilogy. To my surprise, I thought the book was in much better shape than the first drafts I usually turn out, so now I’m working on a second draft. and it’s going fairly quickly. These days, it’s distressingly easy to write a book about how thoroughly the world is collapsing.

What about the historical mystery? you ask. I’ll have more to say when I turn my attention to it.