My Current Project or I Don't Know What the Hell I'm Doing

The book I want to read has not been written, so it's up to me to make it happen. The problem is I'm not entirely sure what I want to read. I think it might be kind of like Dark Academia. I know Dark Academia is being spread around online circles like it's some new kind of genre, but it's not. Peter Straub's Shadowland dived into the genre way back in 1980, which in turn was riffing off of John Fowles The Magus, which is kinda dark academia of a completely different sort.

The idea of running a group of characters through a New England university setting infused with arcane occult rituals does not interest me at all. I never had that kind of university experience. My upper education years were from 1985 to early 1990 at a small state university that axed many of its liberal arts programs so they could have a very shitty football team. I didn't live on campus since it only took me fifteen minutes to drive there. My college experience is so far removed from something like The Magicians it's not even in the same universe. I never read any of the Harry Potter books, they were after my time for that kind of growing up experience, and it's highly unlikely I'll ever read the books or watch any of the films again, considering how much of a dumpster fire their creator has turned out to be. But even then, I've never gravitated to stories about kids in school because I never had that kind of experience. Sure, there was sex and drugs and rock-n-roll and all the things that make college life a universal for so many people where I went to school, but it was also the exact opposite of the ivy-league college experience.

So what do I mean by Dark Academia?

I feel Dark Academia and similar genres thrive off of the close-knit relationships of the key characters, the setting(s) they are confined to, and the shared experiences of the over-arcing story. Obviously, there's books. Arcane tomes and handwritten journals. Perhaps like The Club Dumas, except Corso is a student, a budding book dealer, just beginning to dabble in the dark arts. Maybe what they're learning isn't typical. Maybe it's criminal, secret, deadly even. Keeping it loose like that, the genre opens up to include all kinds of situations.

What about a weird cult that trains young people in the ways of occult rituals? How would growing up in that kind of setting, especially if there were several 'students' coming of age at once, all 'home-schooled', all at varying degrees in their journey into ritualistic magick, forced to confront the reality that they have been held against their will for years?

I think that's a form of Dark Academia.

I think that's what I want to write about. It's the tip of the iceberg, as the story is much bigger than that, but it's a good starting point. I feel starting the story at a point when the main character is younger will at the very least allow me to get into his mindset, which is elusive to me right now. The characters I've been writing about feel flat, which means the story is guiding this project and not the characters, and man ... I need to feel these characters in my heart. Right now, they're just not talking to me.

But this poor kid stuck in a weird doomsday cult realizing there's a whole ass crazy world out there? I can hear this kid whispering to me, and sometimes that's just the spark that will get the story boiling. To be honest, I really don't know what the hell I'm doing, but whatever it is at this point feels dangerous, and I kind of like that feeling.

How about Dark Academia, but Dark. Maybe criminal. Definitely cultish. Certainly devilish.

peace&love