When Fiction Becomes Reality

Every time I think I might run out of topics to blog about, or issues to weave into my Other Worldly series plotlines, along comes headlines. The real world rushes in, keeping me fuming, or laughing, and therefore keeping me writing.

As I said in my author bio for Feeling Alienated, I keep trying to stay one step ahead of fiction becoming reality. And sometimes I, too, feel alienated by the world around me.

To be sure, however, there are news stories worth celebrating, relishing, cheering for. Like the Pentagon finally releasing its UFO footage, making me shout to the stratosphere, “It’s about time!”

With each novel, there’s a sense of urgency that I’d better write this before the truth comes out. But sometimes it’s also a matter of creative license getting the jump on popular culture.

In Alienable Rights, book one of the Other Worldly series, my imagination concocted Planet Wynne, a three-tiered set of spherical and circular structures comprising a hotel casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The bottom level is a ringed planet like Saturn, the middle is fashioned as a flying saucer, and on top a celestial orb depicting Earth’s moon. Planet Wynne proprietor Octavius Wynne is what’s known as a Red Orbiter alien.

I was drafting this novel with its fantastical building in 2018, right about the time they broke ground in Las Vegas for the MSG Sphere entertainment complex. It’s billed as what will be the world’s largest spherical structure, requiring significant logistical feats including a 580-foot-tall crane, and is scheduled to open in 2023.

I wasn’t living in Las Vegas then, and had no clue of this architectural design in the works. My Planet Wynne extravaganza, with a nine-hole golf course and convention center inside the top-tiered moon, was constructed in less than one year (or book) because it had a little help from alien technology. Hence, it “opened” in February 2020 when Alienable Rights was published.

Pre-conceiving a spherical structure on the Strip is all very fine and far out, but would anyone believe I came up with a Space Force, which my protagonist Rowan Layne calls a Space Farce (and justifiably so), before the former guy and his corrupt cohorts made it a ridiculous reality? You know, those undemocratic degenerates who would maraud outer space if left unchecked. Wasn’t it the (then) secretary of the Air Force who crowed about dominating space?

In my novels, it’s not evil extraterrestrials who are out to rule the galaxy.

The public’s reaction on social media to the actual creation of a Space Force was something I didn’t have to fabricate. And at least it made me laugh. My personal favorite was, “The president already has a Space Force between his ears.”

I’ve written about that constitutional catastrophe of a president, and his administration, in my Other Worldly novels, including a presidential election involving a new alien-based political party in book two, Feeling Alienated. Rowan Layne gives a speech at the Omnipresent Party convention (taking place in Planet Wynne), introducing a candidate who happens to be black, gay, and also possesses predominantly alien DNA despite hailing from Las Vegas.

Under the past administration, the US was under siege by HUMANS FIRST! vigilantes storming state houses in armed assault of anyone supporting the otherworldly. In Alienable Rights, local officials gleefully declare their counties “Alien Free Zones,” along with their proud declaration of being a “Second Amendment Sanctuary.”

Ignorance and ubiquitous bigotry are all too real, and all too easy for this author to use as farcical fodder for fiction. A world where humans deny evidence of their otherworldly DNA and decry aliens as entities intent on taking guns away.

In book three, Aliens Abound, Rowan participates in inaugural festivities celebrating a new president and otherworldly vice president. This after having to leave Earth for a month to escape unidentified secret police thugs doing the outgoing president’s maniacal bidding.

While in Washington, Rowan also addresses Congress on behalf of aliens about American aggression in space, and anti-alien hatemongers are not pleased. They who don’t believe the otherworldly should have the right to vote or otherwise participate in government. Sounds all too possible, does it not?

In Being Alien, arriving in online bookstores in a few weeks, Rowan implores British Parliament to embrace universal unity. She tours Scotland, where Scottish independence advocates also strive for rights of other species, including aliens.

The Highlands are teeming with intrigue and enlightenment for folks who care to learn, as Rowan does. But she has to stay one step ahead of those who would silence her not only for supporting alien rights, but also for being an outspoken female.

Fiction is, after all, a reflection of reality in the past, present, and future.

 

 

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