There I was, forcibly hijacked, by nothing less majestic—or clichéd—than moonlight, twisted into something not quite man, not quite wolf, and fully committed howling against tidy tyranny of logic metamorphosed to an existence, blissfully free of logic or critical thinking.
It’s a noble state, really, this poetic suspension of disbelief—the holy sacrament for those of us scribblers enchanted by the feral call of narrative. No room for critical thinking in that space.
Just raw narrative faith bleeding through the claws of the Wolf of Writing, some lunatic muse baying at a world that stopped making sense long ago.
And so it was, at the absurd hour of the wolf, under the mocking gaze of the moon at dawn’s ugly crack, on May 19, 2025, a ridiculous yet compelling question sprang into my delirious mind: precisely how long would it take to hop all the way around the lunar surface? And how neatly could a reluctant hero slide into this preposterous scenario?
I lobbed the question at an all-knowing AI with too much smirk in its tone; the mathematics were suspiciously credible. Average moon-hop: six meters. Boosters? Double that—twelve. Thirty-eight rest stops. The math’s solid enough. The truth? Unhinged but real.
It’s during these caffeinated cannabis-infused sessions that I plot and beat-create, dialing the nudge to eleven, or possibly twelve, as recommended by my wonderfully exasperated psychoanalyst, a woman who long ago believed there was hope of curing my tendency for extremes.
I had two uninterrupted alone time weeks to finish my hero’s journey. Sprint-planning meetings kick off around five—give or take an hour, because time, much like werewolf transformations, is notoriously unreliable. My ritualistic writing sessions began in the dim predawn at precisely, or vaguely, five or perhaps five-thirty-ish, on a balcony camping chair, perched like some rogue back-alley hacker or disheveled prophet, hacking into a notebook balanced on my knees like some deranged altar.
Raincoat zipped to the throat, hood up like a hacker on the run. Wind’s always sharp. Cuts through the bones. One hand on a can of battery-acid energy drink. The other hand half-committed to a joint. Burnt nerves and caffeine, the holy twin snakes of progress.
This is the plotting pit. Beat-structure inferno.
Meanwhile, a new couch arrived. Fancy bastard, equipped with one of those gloriously unnecessary electric reclining chair units.
The moment before the jump. And I needed to push my hero off the couch—more than a push, a goddamn cosmic kick.
One novella like clockwork set on fire. A slow crawl into the bloodbath.
My satire deepened, spinning into a savage critique of politics, society, and technology.
Yet strangely enough, it never quite felt like science fiction, but rather a joyful and savage satire, as bizarre and genuine as moonlight-induced lycanthropy itself.
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