My new novel ends in July 2020, while people stand shoulder-to-shoulder at a music festival. Oops.
—all of which are shelved under “mystery/thriller,” but which incorporate some sort of science fiction conceit. My books are set in some recognizable version of the present day, but deviate in specific ways, controlled by me. This remains true for my next book,A book-length work of fiction takes a pretty long time. I usually take around a year on a first draft, six months or so of rewriting and going back and forth with my editor, and then maybe two months of copy editing.
I’ve been anxious in the past that a book I’m working on will be superseded by another book with a similar premise, or that a social or political issue central to the book’s themes will no longer be in the zeitgeist by pub day. It never occurred to me to worry that a massive crisis would so change the fabric of how we live that my work of realistic fiction would no longer seem remotely realistic.
Right now, we are in the middle of total and utter upheaval. What reader will accept that my characters blithely go about their business in Los Angeles in the spring and summer of this year we’re in? The virus—news of it, reaction to it, fear and dread and anger surrounding it—has so swamped human experience that any work of fiction set during these months must either beAs problems go, I realize this one is vanishingly small.
These facts mean nothing to anyone but me—I literally made them all up—and yet having to abandon any of them because of an uncontrollable externality feels like a betrayal. Stubbornly, or stupidly, I want to leave it all, to present my eventual readers in early 2021 with a version of 2020 they’ll know could not have existed. I presumed when writing those chapters that the world would always remain more or less as it was, and I mourn the safety of that presumption.
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