A Perhaps Weekly Pandemic Periodical, #6

A lot has happened in the past month any which way you measure it. The same is true, here, at J.G.P. MacAdam Online.

The past week has been especially eventful. I've completed a final structural edit of my science fiction novel, The Way Across, which is based on and taken from The Vallen, an earlier work, but completely reimagined and rewritten. I've also had two more short story publications added to my name, The Pickers, as Passengers Journal, and A Road Not Taken, at Apeiron Review. And what more the baby's toddling all over the house at this point and it's like having a little babbling penguin follow you around room to room.

But even more has happened in the past month—hasn't it?

Re-Post! Artificial Intelligence and its (not so) Godlike power in THE VALLEN

I am a fan of Believer magazine and in the most recent edition (which I received in the mailbox earlier this week), I came across an article by Meghan O'Gieblyn and wow! did it put the hook in me. I mean she was talking all about the worship of artificial intelligence and the Book of Job and the burden of choice and what kind of god God was back in the fourteenth century versus now, and so on.

The kind of stuff that just enthralls the fuck outta me. (Needless to say I stayed up to finish the article, titled Good Shepherds.)

Update!

Update for the month of June 2019:

I am busy scribbling, scribbling, scribbling. I have new stories bubbling over the rim. I've got one about an Afghan who gives their American counterpart a laughing disease. I've got another about that roadtrip back home after Thanksgiving and a not-so-nice ghost paying a visit in the car. I've got yet another about a farmer on Mars.

So many stories!

So little time...

Check back in to find out where I place these stories (fingers crossed!), and in the meantime feel free to peruse the archives and take a gander at my nearly a year's worth of blogging on everything from my latest novel, THE VALLEN (currently in querying stage), to my first short story ever published, to my dissections on various novels, writing styles and how-to's for writing here.

J.G.P. MacAdam Online is yours to explore!

Knowledge + Time = ?

I try to determine what the wall is, where it’s leading Essa, and what walking the wall costs her.

This is the central conflict, dilemma, struggle, call it whatever you want, of my newest novel, THE VALLEN. From conception (during the 2016 Presidential campaign in the United States) to brainstorming to outline to writing the rough draft then many other drafts after, I’ve come to the point where I have now completed a submittable manuscript.

And all the while…

I’ve been asking…

Just what is the wall?

There are walls and walls and walls...

Borrowed from Wikipedia

Walls have been around for a long time. As architectural objects, they have a multitude of structural and cultural uses. I can claim no expert knowledge of walls, or their uses, or their endurance or deterioration over the ages, but I can gather together my sentiments towards walls and scribble them down here.

In writing a novel, THE VALLEN, featuring a wall — a border barrier, in particular,  — I obviously withhold some very strong feelings towards walls, barriers, earthworks and other structures which bar or impede free movement.

The world of THE VALLEN

Borrowed from pbs.org

In the months leading up to the 2016 United States presidential election, I clicked off the news and asked myself: what would America look like if Trump’s wall stood for over a hundred years?

What would you do to challenge that impediment to your movement? Would you try to flee—even if it was your own people who stood up the wall in the first place? Or would you welcome it? Is the wall good? Is the wall bad?

Chapter breaks and how I used them in THE VALLEN

From this amazing site showing a variety of past-present photos

Welp, I'm at the halfway point of proofreading THE VALLEN (like p. 185 in my double-spaced manuscript) and I'm pausing to reflect on why I've organized the chapters in the way that I have.

Essentially:

• Odd-numbered chapters: Essa's past
• Even-numbered chapters: Essa's present

Outlining a blueprint for THE VALLEN

The Wall of Jericho, artist's rendering, more information available here

The power of a blueprint (or outline) for a novel is perhaps best represented in the plot of the novel. (I spoke in a previous post about how Rowling's outlining technique for Harry Potter benefited the page-turning plot of her books...).

Memory spreading its branches through THE VALLEN

Memory interconnected and disconnecting bits falling away

In the beginning of novel development, I tend to research every teensy-weensy little thing. For THE VALLEN, I went over memory and walls and how to build walls, and where and why walls were built, and how memory is stored, the latest neurological science, how technology enhances or impairs our memory, whether all of this translates to knowledge—and if it does—then what kind of knowledge?

What is THE VALLEN?

Filched from Wikipedia

In keeping with the updated purpose of this blog, welcome to a behind-the-scenes scoop on my newest novel, THE VALLEN.

What is The Vallen? 

Funny you should ask that, my main character—Essa Finch—asks the very same thing...

So...where to begin talking about THE VALLEN...hmmm...hmmm...

The Shapes of Refugee Stories

Image taken from here

I just can't read them all. There are too many migrant-refugee books and not enough hours and not enough energies to read every friggin' one of 'em.

So, I take a deep breath....and Google stuff...

If you've never taken a gander at Kurt Vonnegut's The Shapes of Stories thesis-that-never-was, now would be a good time to take one:

Finished the 1st of the 4th

Yes, ladies and gentlehearts, I have completed the first draft of my fourth novel, The Vallen.


Gosh, I'm just glad I can count that high.


I marked the occasion with a chin nip. My raggedy beard came off in tatters. "Good riddens, old fellow! You were worth the combing. I'll grow a replacement fellow here shortly, like a clone-you grown in a test tube, except out of my face..."

Characters and Dilemmas

In ground warfare terms, per the US Army’s FM 3-21.8, Infantry Rifle and Platoon, Chapter 1: Fundamentals of Tactics, it is not only essential to create a problem for your enemy—namely by shooting at them—but to create a dilemma. Namely, shooting at your enemy, cutting off routes of egress, and dropping artillery, bombs, mortars and whatever else you can on them in order to defeat your enemy or force them into a choice you (the author) want them to go in.

So too in fiction.