Rosalie: Top Gun

Top Gun: Maverick was released as I wrote Salem to Salem in the summer of 2022, but it loomed large over the rest of the summer. In the dying days of August, when I started Rosalie, I had a chance to see both the original film and its sequel in the cinema for my birthday with some cold beer. Great! People didn't judge me for drinking that summer the way they do now (but enough about me).

I'd already had the idea of Jack becoming a fighter-jet but when I saw Top Gun: Maverick, that cemented it in my mind. Slowly, as I did away with the second and third acts of the novel, Jack became the book's main villain. A tragic villain, much like a Universal Monster. In the end, as he tries to reach the heavens, he becomes a reverse-Icarus; his heart freezing rather than wings catching fire.