Louvie G Tucker – Author

Hello everyone! Hope you’re all doing well!

Since I last posted here, I have finished going through my book a third time for edits, coordinated with my wife to start the final rounds of editing (she’s my publisher and holds me to task), and began outlining book 3. Still not sure on book 3’s name but we will get there.

Here’s a question. Have you read book 1, The Visitor?

When I am plotting and writing this series, I consistently wonder if the story is original enough. Of course, most stories are derivatives however what separates the stories we create from the parent story is being unique. In the case of The Visitor, there were a couple stories to influence it but there is one story I can point to as its parent story. It’s the 2016 election season.

For those who may not know, I started devising the story as part of the 2016 NaNoWriMo. I thought it was going to be a short story…maybe two books max. Anyway, I wanted to try my hand at dystopia and what better blueprint than speculating what a Donald Trump presidential win would look like decades later. Mix that in with some historical references, 1984, and creative licenses, you get The Visitor.

At the time, like so many other people, I thought Trump had a snowball’s chance in hell to win the 2016 election…Then I found out that hell had a thermostat. You can imagine, or remember, the shear disbelief that a man with absolutely no plans or understanding how the government functions won. From that moment on, I began to wonder “Will anyone think this story is original?”

It bothers me that elements from my story are showing up in US society and politics, namely the deporters. It bothers me that people may think I am stealing content from current events and plopping it into a book and slapping a “Seal of Original Content” on it. I can always point to the timestamps of the first book’s notes to show that I came up with all of these things before the 2016 election. However, the 2024 election is making book 3 feel like a real ripoff.

Book 3 starting forming shortly after I wrote the first draft of The Foreigners last year. I had an idea what I wanted to do and how to do it. As I plotted out the beats and worked on potential issues with plot, I wondered if what I was planning would be believable. After all, I told myself, people can’t be so dumb to literally choose the option that’s clearly bad for them. I thought of ways to trick society in my story to choose a horrible option to help with the realism.

Then the asshole won again.

That alone seized up the creative works. I had a nice, coherent plan to explain a situation only for reality to prove to me that something doesn’t have to be logical in order for it to happen.

I had a decision to make. Do I stick with my original plan or do I revise based on current events. In the end, I revised. Ultimately, I concluded, it doesn’t matter if the story is not completely original. If it is relatable, engaging and unique, then it’s fine. Now, I am using current events to help shape book 3 which still feels unique to me. When it is published and available, I hope readers can feel the same way about it.

So, is my series original? Yes*.

*Original in that I did create the story by drawing on inspiration from life, current events, history, and other stories.