I’ve been on the struggle bus with female MC in this new book. I keep trying to make her less monstrous than other Hurley heroines, and is it any wonder that’s been a struggle? ? At this point in my life, I really need to stop fighting my urge to “differentiate” and just go full Hurley from onset.
Every time I try to pull my punches, it just gets me stuck running round and round in circles for months and months. There was a “fuck it” mindset to my early work that’s gotten lost along the way as I was read more widely. I often nitpick choices if I let myself linger too long on them.
Most people think my last book was Light Brigade. But it was The Broken Heavens, which came out in Jan 2020. Like most pandemic books – let alone smaller press pandemic books – that one sank (fans loved it tho). I also had a collection out in 2022! Who knew? lol
I had real soul-searching few years in there where I tried to write a book that was “more marketable” and would “break out…” and we all know how that goes. In the end, it just felt like I was torturing myself. I kept circling round to my lack of breakout as something I could fundamentally control.
Success in capitalism has very little to do with talent, but that doesn’t keep us all from chasing it. The story of merit and hard work is so deeply engrained in American culture that even if you know this intellectually, it still haunts you emotionally.
The pandemic years resulted in many of us being Very Online, to our detriment. Following seemingly rosy careers of others instead of keeping eyes on your own work can be creative killer. What got me out of it was coming back to the work, and joy of the work, but I still notice hesitation in myself.
Even now, it’s when I hesitate and say, “Gosh, are you SURE you really want to do THAT?” that I know I’ve got a good idea. But it scares me so much sometimes that I put it back on the shelf and ruminate a lot longer than I used to. Luckily, as now, I do pick it back up.
Arting in public requires a great deal of confidence, often arrogance, and the world is built to break down that confidence. There’s reason many successful people are grifters. Those most confident in their abilities tend to be the people who are least talented.
It’s been an interesting road back into writing fiction long form. The ghosts of the early 2020s are still there. I’m extraordinarily proud of THESE SAVAGE STARS while being aware that it is far from perfect. But it’s definitely a Hurley novel, and that’s the most important thing.
So, let’s just go full Hurley, Hurley.
