Bat Crap Crazy - Author’s Note
Bat Crap Crazy (BCC) was conceived in November 2013 as part of a challenge to write a 50,000-word novel in a month.[1] By Thanksgiving, I had written 50,000 words, but the book was far from complete. Over the next seven years, the loosely formed story about a virus sat in a virtual desk drawer while real life happened. Then, in 2020, COVID shut the world down, and I had the opportunity to focus on writing again.
I wanted to return to BCC and fill out the missing pieces of the story, but I wondered if I had unknowingly written a story that too closely mirrored what was unfolding before us. Nevertheless, I quietly began to expand the plot because I still loved it. The story’s writing was cathartic because it helped me explore my feelings and emotions about what was happening in the news and in my neighborhood in the early days of the pandemic. It also gave me the perspective needed for a situation no one could control.
In November of 2021, I found an online community of writers called Shut Up & Write.[2] I signed in every morning and wrote or rewrote for an hour and a half. Before too long, the second and third drafts of the book were complete. In the process, I added, deleted, rearranged, and changed large chunks of the book.
The most significant change I made was a monumental shift in the primary point of view from Bailey Dayton to Anita Belo. I quite simply think Anita has a more compelling, albeit horrid, story to tell. Bailey’s character is too mainstream to explore the lengths to which a person would go to save their own life.
Even before Anita contracts the Marburg Virus,[3] she is a self-absorbed individual, but once she is faced with her own mortality, she no longer cares what it costs to survive. She has one goal and one goal only and does mind-boggling things to save her own life. The rest is collateral damage. Her story is as linear as it gets. As the novel unfolds and more characters get sucked into her quest, you realize that life isn’t at all linear; it is a spider web of complex systems.
We live under the false belief that we are rugged individuals capable of surviving anything on our own when, in fact, our society’s framework is complicated and fragile.
The pandemic proved that a dystopian wasteland isn’t as much a fantasy movie as we once believed. In truth, we have much more in common with each other in our shared experience of the world, be it good, bad, or indifferent. We need each other, and we often don’t know what personal struggles another person is going through, But what BCC makes clear is how those struggles may affect your own life.
One final thought: Anita will disgust and anger you. Her actions will challenge you to keep reading, but remember, she has an essential message about facing the fear of death. Bat Crap Crazy isn’t a love story or a cozy mystery. It is a tale with an important lesson that taught me to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I ask you to do the same.
https://www.cjhanlonwrites.com/blog/bat-crap-crazy-synopsis
[1] Visit https://nanowrimo.org/ for more information about this annual challenge.
[2] Visit https://www.shutupwrite.com/ for more information about this community.
[3] Visit https://www.who.int/health-topics/marburg-virus-disease#tab=tab_1 and https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/marburg/index.html to learn more about the Marburg virus.
