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Tinajero Papers

“Public Relations at the End of the World” – Excerpt from Wear Chainmail to the Apocalypse

“I wouldn’t have finished this novel without the Wild Detectives. I had two-thirds of the book written. But for whatever reason, I couldn’t bring myself to complete it. The novel was in a precarious state, which is to say: I was in a precarious state. Nothing felt right. A story pretending to be a story, a writer pretending to be a writer—the characters were hitting their marks and saying their lines, but nothing felt true. In desperation, I relocated from the seclusion of my house. I went to my favorite bookstore and established a new routine. I’d order coffee, open up my MacBook, and start writing. Miraculously, the story found its way again. Wait until you read the farmhouse chapter. I was in a rare state while working on that chapter. It was written in a single afternoon at Wild Detectives. I deviated from the main plot. I broke from my narrator’s point of view. None of it was planned. And it just worked. The energy of that chapter propelled me to the end of my first novel. The chapter featured here is not that chapter, but I’ll stand by it all the same. In this section, I explore a trope of apocalyptic genre. The living are confined, while the infected roam free. How does our fearful narrator maintain his sanity? He discovers a few good books, of course.” – David Hopkins, author of Wear Chainmail to the Apocalypse and patron of the Wild Detectives (current favorite drink: Pecan Pie)