The idea for The Man Terror Club came to me as I was waking up one morning ten years ago. Who knows what odd places thoughts steal in from when you’re only half awake, but I wondered how an elevator operator might fight back if she was being sexually harassed. As my somnolent imagination meandered, it strayed toward acts of physical resistance and retribution, and the title The Man Terror Club popped into my head.
It may be the most evocative of all the titles I’ve written, but I worried about creating the story. That title deserved a brilliant book, and I wasn’t yet confident enough in my first two novels to believe they had prepared me to produce something of that caliber. I experimented with the idea in 2010-2012 as a short story, but I didn’t feel ready to write even that much.
So I waited.
I got more serious about writing in 2017. I rewrote Under Shōko’s Bed and Neyuki and improved both novels. How much more experience would I need before I could do justice to my idea? I thought it best to write at least two more novels before I tried The Man Terror Club. The problem was I didn’t have two other stories that moved me as The Man Terror Club did, so I finally resolved to just do it. In the spring of that year, over two months, I produced the first draft. I did not have the entire plot firmly in mind from the beginning, although I knew things would take a dark turn and end in murder. I envisioned each of the pre-murder chapters as a short story focused on a different member of the club. As I wrote, though, the women’s stories blended together and lost their short story flavor.
Still, each chapter for the first three-quarters of the novel is told first person from a different character’s point of view. (After that, narration stays first person, but already-introduced characters narrate sections of the chapters.) I didn’t realize at the time that I was flying in the face of writing pundits who warn neophytes and even more advanced writers never to write first person with a large cast of narrators. You should have few narrators and preferably only one. But what I attempted, eleven narrators, is not unheard of. William Faulkner used fifteen first-person narrators in As I Lay Dying. Of course, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, while I remain unpublished. Nevertheless, I wanted to try.
Perhaps the most surprising experience of writing The Man Terror Club was how much I came to like the characters. While all the women have been betrayed, abused, or discarded, they remained kind, giving, and caring. Their love for each other heals them, and that healing is most of the story, not their terrorism as they lash out at the evil men do.
With my ongoing interest in the characters, I have even been bouncing the idea of a sequel around. I am taking notes and considering key characters, plot twists, and terrorist acts. I worry it may be premature to start a sequel before the first novel is even published. But The Man Terror Club, while not finalized, is just about ready for professional editing. I don’t think the fundamental story will change. And I want to spend a few months living with those women again. They are lovely people (who do extreme things), and more of their story ought to be told.