Progress reports and new projects

Well, I wrapped up the $20 ehows but found shifting back to the $15 surprisingly easier than expected. There’s a lot of business/finance articles that play onto topics I’ve already done with real estate and while the acceptable list of source websites is different, it’s not too hard to bat them out. This is good.
And then there’s my new project, which is actually a 15 years old project.
Back in 1995, I finished Loose Changes, an SF novel involving a northwest Florida superheroine in a very altered reality. Silicon Valley has seceded, the Comanches control Texas, the Nazis run Germany and King Arthur rules Britain. It was fairly heavy on contemporary political issues (abortion rights, the militia movement, authoritarian government—regrettably none of that has gone out of date as a topic) and, I thought pretty good. But as usual, it didn’t cut any ice with the publishers.
A few years ago I revised it, changing the identity and motives of the villain (and retitling it The Impossible Takes a Little Longer). But I couldn’t help thinking that maybe I should update it, given that it was so very rooted in the mid-nineties and that was 10 years earlier. maybe I should bring it into the present too.
I decided to try pushing it as a period piece instead. For one thing, updating would mean dealing with 9/11 in my alternate timeline, which I didn’t feel up to; for another the politics were just as pertinent in the 21st century, even if they weren’t set then; for a third, what good would it do? It could easily take two years to garner even one rejection, so after two turn downs, it would be four years out of date. Was I going to redo it time after time?
And also, comic-books were very important in my protagonist’s personal life. At 27 years old in 1995, the super-hero comics she’d have been exposed to in childhood would have been close in tone to my own. 2005 would put her into the Punisher/grim-and-gritty era which wouldn’t work for her character.
In hindsight, it was a doomed decision: I think I knew there was no way to pull off a 1990s period piece. For one thing, the 1990s doesn’t have the cachet a 1960s or 1970s period piece might; for another, my alt. timeline is too far removed from the real 1990s to work as a period piece—no Bill Clinton, for example.
Well, I still like the book, so I’m now thinking of ways to revise it. And I see four.
•Make it a real 1990s period piece. Add details of dress, songs, culture and so on and convince the publishers it was an artistic decision rather than laziness.
•Set it in the present, but not so tied up with current politics. Current issues, yes, but don’t map out the timeline to the point it’s obviously 2010-based.
•Set it down the road—assume the Big Event that triggers a lot of the novel’s backstory is the Mayan convergence that’s supposedly due for 2012 (that won’t be the real reason, but it will explain things adequately for the characters) and put the book seven years later, in 2019.
•Set it back in the 1960s. A genuine period piece and a period I could work with much better than the 1990s. And that way, it’ll never be dated.
My conclusions:
•1990s was out. I just can’t see it working, regardless of the detail I put in.
•Present day: That’s much easier now than I used to think. 9/11 is 10 years ago which makes it easier to work with. And the immense abundance of trade paperback comics reprints can easily explain KC’s moral sense being shaped by Silver Age comics.
•Future: Doable, but frankly the present could work just as well. And I’d prefer it.
•1960s. I really like this idea. Instead of resurgent Nazis, what if Hitler never lost, and continental Europe east of the USSR is Nazi ruled and 100 percent Aryan? And King Arthur returned in response to Hitler’s threat to Britain? Quetzalcoatl returned to Central America in response to United States policies (like the ethnic cleansing in Guatemala and the STD experiments there that are now in the news)? And instead of Silicon Valley seceding, it was Georgia and Alabama over civil rights?
Plus the A-bomb has triggered the creation of paranormals like KC, superhumans and mutants of one sort or another (like the psi-slavers who keep blacks in the seceding states in mental shackles for the government).
I really, really like that setting. And if it’s, say, 1969 or 1970, KC has grown up with the Golden Age comics, and then immerses herself in the Silver Age while she’s in her teens. That works for her character.
On the other hand, changing things that much means a lot more work. And some of the changes I really don’t like. I have KC defending abortion clinics from right-to-life killers, who don’t exist in 1969, and helping battered wives get to shelters, which I can’t see happening in 1969 either (wife-beating was treated very differently then, and I don’t think they had shelters). Of course, she can tackle other issues, but most of them are going to be 1960s (or alt.1960s), and I’d kind of like the political themes to be a little more current.
So my tentative conclusion is that I should go with the present-day option and see if I can make that work. I’ll try replotting with a slightly vaguer timeline and see if I can make it hold up.
But I’m also going to think about ways I could maybe make a 1969 setting click with the kind of issues I want to tackle. And if I can’t, well, I may just use that setting for something else, because I love it.