People read the back covers of the SwiftPad Saga novels, and the question is…
From the first book New Business…Takeover…
...Narcissism is the shiny object that always attracts, and today it drives the bottom line. You have to be the star in your own show, and now, with the Internet social media sensation SwiftPad, there are new episodes about you each time you connect!
Or the second book …Golden Fungus…Insurgency
But Ben Cadez, former Nixon operative and Paula’s one-time lover, also wields the power of the youth-preserving Golden Fungus and is now a Republican candidate for President. They are all in the crosshairs of a deranged and corrupt President, and Portland must decide whether to co-opt or fight.
And the trilogy’s final volume… Pandemic…Extinction
Follow the Insurgents as they retaliate against the Incumbent's reprisals, while fighting for the hearts and minds of an increasingly fragmented electorate. Meanwhile Kip Rehain, SwiftPad founder, seeks his former lover and business partner GG, by slowly making his way into the heart of the Leviathan, where nature conspires with mega-hackers and a mysterious disease to bring all of us into the next stage of existence.
“What are you trying to say Lee? What is your point?”
First off, it wasn't until long after I finished writing it that I realized the last two volumes of the trilogy are about a 2nd term of a tRump presidency. Fortunately for the world and the U.S. that 2nd term is pure fiction, like the novels...
I didn’t know it would be a “trilogy” when I finished the first novel, “Digging up New Business:The SwiftPad Takeover”. I started it the day after I “separated” from IBM. I wasn’t ready to go. In fact, I felt I was at my peak as a consultant, still energetic, with real solid experience under my belt, strong technically, winning and keeping business for the company. I felt like I was being wasted when I finally was beginning to get pretty good at my profession.
So I decided to write:
1) a satire of how a company like IBM operates.
2) a satire of Portland, populated with some characters I was familiar with
3) an exploration of the business and technical underpinnings of an idealized Social Media product.
4) roll it all into a whodunit mystery, with a crazed Ted Bundy-like serial killer calling from inside the house.
With the above “prescription” I wrote the book. I learned a few things, and during the editing I learned even more. I got “professional help” (a brilliant editor, Linda Franklin) and learned more.
That was my second novel. My first book, “Farewell the Dragon” was almost written “in the dark”. The process of writing a novel can be a life changing experience. At least it is for me. I take the ‘suffering artist’ part of the process to heart. When you first start a long fiction story there are of course many unknowns. I suppose that you can know the beginning, middle and end of a short story before you even write the first sentence. But with a work of 100 thousand words or more, you just have to have confidence in your inner “story machine”. You need a belief that it will come, and you will find your way through it. There are days, even weeks where it doesn’t come, and you have to fight through that. When it finally does come, it can be cause for some troubling introspection.
It is a difficult process that you soon become aware is not something that you can count on. That the “well” you pull the story from is only so deep and the water will only be refreshing and thirst quenching for so long. So you are working against time. Once started it has to be finished directly or it will be lost.
I think the first book, Farewell the Dragon, worked. I have some great reviews from serious readers.
The first SwiftPad book worked too. The ending was surprising and satisfying to readers. But some of the characters were a little thin for my tastes, I knew I could do better, and (to my annoyance) the story was nowhere near finished. Even on those days when I wanted to abandon it, I couldn't.
Kirkus review of the SwiftPad Takeover
So, the larger theme of the SwiftPad Saga evolved. Digging up New Business:The SwiftPad Takeover had opened too many questions for me to ignore them. Clearly politics became more and more central to the story, as politics has become more central to everyone, and as the implications of the US Presidential election of 2016 became clearer. Oh, I wasn’t totally surprised and I warned many people against casting their votes for him. I kind of “predicted” the incursion by the unmarked “little Green men” (what Putin’s forces were called in Crimea) into the city of Portland Oregon. (see the second book Digging the Golden Fungus: The SwiftPad Insurgency). But still, the inhumanity of this junta can’t help but surprise anyone.
The monster who was elected in 2016 changed everything. I came to believe that art - all art - was meaningless if it ignored the existential reality we were living and watching - and reading social media. Since the first novel was about the creation of the “next generation of social media” and it took place in Portland Oregon - well - the second, “…Insurgency…” novel is a story that was much more organic than the first book. I didn’t need a prescription. The whole novel just blasted out of the world we are living in during 2019-2020.
As for the final volume - Digging Around the Pandemic: The SwiftPad Extinction - it was an organic writing process as well, but not as easy. Since Portland became ground zero for protests, and I sort of - predicted it - I was forced into a box. Would I try and predict the rest of it? As I write this it is still fifty days until the election - the books are finished and being printed. So I went back to satire - dark satire, that came out of a reality of my own imagination.
“Is this some kind of left wing Turner Diaries rip-off?”
No. Turner Diaries is a notorious novel about a right wing revolt against a liberal government - (I have not read it) - but I know it was a handbook and Bible of sorts for Timothy McVeigh, who set the Oklahoma City Fertilizer Bomb. In a way the SwiftPad Saga does try and come to grips with a fact that the right has been crowing about for a long time - that they all have guns. And liberals for the most part do not. So what hope is there if things come down to a real fight? History doesn’t leave much hope for the unarmed.
Well - we have other strengths. I try and look at that, and see how it might come out if we use those strengths. After all, conflict is no longer just about infantry with rifles. So, I try to give some hope for if things go off the rails. But that is the last thing I want to see.
But doesn’t talking about it make it more likely to happen?
I don’t know. I don’t think so. That certainly isn’t what I want. But in the 20th Century, things went horribly wrong because of disastrous domestic political events. So, I guess I am gaming it out. Trying to see what might happen. Of course I insert what some might call “a lot of nonsense” (such as the love affairs and the unusual Eukaryote (fungus) that plays a prominent role.) But I don’t think that there is any danger of people taking this book to heart as a prescription for armed rebellion. The story is not bits and pieces cobbled together but a unitary whole. It is FICTION. I hope it is art. It is a story.
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