The Making of NOT OK: An Introduction

I felt pretty chaotic before I wrote NOT OK, having just finished Torn Pages Orpheus, and having gone through a personal life crisis. The book's title summed up how I felt and its themes represented distilled feelings about toxic masculinity. I listened to Radiohead as I wrote the book so you can see the influence in the title and there are little nods here and there. The book also contains DNA from Alice in Wonderland and Alien, but I decided to make the main vibe a fairytale story. This is a very dark techno-fairytale in which the main character crawls through the rabbit hole, goes into a cyber-city, and then uncovers a dark conspiracy.

I'll admit there were QAnon-type themes unconciously bubbling to the surface but this book wasn't meant to be a sequel, it was a dark psychological fairytale. It wasn't meant to be personal, either. If anything, David is based on David Bowie; hence the multiple "Let's Dance" references. I do feel this book is a cyber-religious sketch on Torn Pages given the similar character names, "Molly", "David". I rediscovered Christianity as I wrote this book and while the brick of an old computer may seem the perfect argument for atheism, the multiple uses of "oh my god" or "Jesus" and the descent into Hell in cyber-city make this book feel like Dante's Inferno.