Holy Crap! Or, when life imitates art.

As mentioned in my last post from ancient times (about a year ago), I'd been working on the final book in the Chupacabra Trilogy, "Ye Goddess! The Tail's End." I'll admit, I was struggling. I've scrubbed 6 attempts at completing the story, and despite having thoroughly mapped it out in my outlining, graphing, and time-lining process (you can read about that here and here), the story on paper wasn't capturing what I envision. I wasn't satisfied with just getting to the end to wrap things up, so I scrapped it. Time and time again. I'd made it a little more than half-way through when I scrapped version 5 and about 2/3rds of the way through on version 6. Then I walked away, still dissatisfied, and hoping to recharge and find the story's heart. 

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How I wish I'd powered through in the early days of writing, back with my first outline, as I'd have been able to claim some sort of clairvoyant ability. In that version, Carmen del Toro, in her present carnation as Mother Nature, leaves a trail of destruction that includes powerful hurricanes devastating Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Florida, and Texas, earthquakes in Caribbean and Mexico, wildfires, floods, tornadoes and assorted other natural disasters (sound familiar?) Bee populations decline in spite of Carmen's best efforts to save them (although not because of 'murder hornets'--I didn't see that coming!), and a long forgotten pathogen emerges. In "Ye Goddess!" version 2, that pathogen was a bacteria, not a virus, but it stormed the population in a manner similar to what we're experiencing with SARS-CoV-2.

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I suspect that many authors are scrambling to rewrite and revise manuscripts with a contemporary or near-future setting to incorporate the reality of 2020. I won't be alone. I wish I could say I'm scrambling to incorporate the bizarre times into my story. Alas, I'm having to tone down my realism lest I appear to have no imagination and am merely recording life as we know it! I won't and can't claim any special forsight. All that we're experiencing now has been predicted by scientists, and the events are all the inevitable outcome of our own actions over the past century.  

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I'm not prescient in my storytelling. I've only incorporated the inevitable. One of the things I've struggled with in "Ye Goddess!" is how it needs to end. I've had both a 'happy ending' where the day is saved, and a horrific ending where humankind, in our hubris, succeeds in wresting power from the gods and pursuing our folly to our ultimate demise. 

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I don't know yet how my story will end but I do hope I can finish writing it before we find out how ours--humanity's--ends.

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