What the Hell Does My Modern Day YA Novel Have to Do with a WWII Robot?
And When a Robot Isn’t a Robot, What Is It?
It’s amazing how something can become timely after being a relic of history for so long.
Many years ago, when I wrote the first draft of my novel, Diary of a Girl at the End of the World, as a screenplay, it was a very different story (with a different title). The protagonist was a little boy, and it was a big, action-filled animated children’s film.
When my Dreamworks producer fell out of the project, the script went where all my unproduced scripts went back then: the screenplay graveyard (i.e., the bottom of my sock drawer).
Years later, after seeing a number of the pre-teen and teen female gymnasts I was training in gymnastics at the time enthusiastically reading The Hunger Games, I picked it up out of curiosity and read it. I immediately saw why the story and protagonist resonated with them so deeply.
Now I had a whole different vision for my children’s film.
Only it would no longer be for children.
And it would no longer be a film.
Set a few weeks into our future, I wanted it to be about a lonely teenage girl finding empowerment through surfing. And I wanted the story to unfold within the pages of her personal journal. Her inner thoughts, hopes, and fears.
And it would be set during the alien invasion and occupation of Earth. Only these aliens had been watching Earth from their distant world for a very long time. In particular, they must have witnessed how Adolf Hitler, many decades earlier, had brought the world to its knees with fascism and authoritarian rule.
In my novel, the aliens empower collaborating humans with shiny new bodies that don’t grow old or wear out. A reward for betraying their race. They place these Shinies in positions of power in the occupied cities. The young are seduced and coerced into joining the Honor Guard—a youth brigade—and holding huge rallies to make subjugation seem like a good thing.
“They’re so much wiser than us. They’re not here as conquerors. But as teachers. And we have so very much to learn.”
But that’s a lie. And to expose that lie and fight back, the protagonist, Noa, finds the final resting place of the robot, Metal Cadet, hoping that if she powers it back up, it can join the resistance against the aliens, like it did in Europe all those long decades ago.
Only she discovers the Metal Cadet isn’t a robot. It’s a vessel. And to resurrect it, she will have to temporarily transfer her life force into its metal husk via the steel tank known as the Changeling.
Noa will have to pilot the Metal Cadet.
Her fight for freedom and resistance to tyranny rule is timely today, all over again.
