Hello again!

The art of satire boils down to confronting reality by exaggerating its absurdity.

As you might imagine, this has become a very difficult thing to do.

Obviously, nothing of what is going on in the world is light-hearted, or comedic, or in any way something to laugh at. What it is is absurd. Every awful event, every tragic headline ... the absurdity is at the forefront. What use is satire when the obvious details of reality are absurd?!?

I'll give you one of the more 'tame' examples of when reality has encroached on my story. When I started writing the Elixir of Power trilogy, my plan was to use Book 3 as a chance to satirize the system of 'free trade capitalism' ... which is to say, the previously standard system of capitalism that discouraged the use of tariffs ...

To avoid weighing in too heavily in the actual emerging events of the world, I will just say that I am having to pivot quite a bit from my original plans for Book 3. I think the only winning move here is not to satirize things by making them zany ... but by making things zany, and highlighting how normalized it has all become.

Imagine, a gang of pirates who sail from port to port in search of equity restructuring schemes (a Pirate Equity Firm); a doomsday religious cult who revere acne and believe in a 'Great Poppening' when the pus of the world will flood the lands; a cybertronic robot who sobs hysterically on the street corner because he was programmed to feel immense emotional pain so that tissue companies could test their product ... imagine all these sights and more as you walk down the street, and thinking it as just another Tuesday.

I think that is going to have to be the plan. A lot of the ideas I had will be able to stay, but I'll have to chance how I approach them and present them, if that makes sense?

And, perhaps the hardest of all, is that the main theme of Book 3 will be about holding on to hope, even when better days seem impossible. I don't want to focus too much on the current doom-and-gloomery of the world, but I'll just say that writing a hopeful ending is particularly difficult when the author is not exactly full of hope.

But we keep marching forward, keep writing, keep reading, keep hoping and waiting. Sometimes it's all you can do.

You can also really, really regret choosing this as the time to do a big political -satirical project. Why couldn't I have written something normal?!

In any case, as usual, check out the books below. You might find something that makes for a good distraction from all this. Stay safe.

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Until next time!