MAGA Country | A Novel
Updated: Aug 24, 2022
Why I decided to write a “QAnon novel.”
by Lorie Denison, Author/Contributor
Like many of my fellow citizens, I’ve been following Q or “QAnon. I’ve followed Q from the very first drop to this day. I’ve even spent a fair amount of time eavesdropping on 8chan/8kun. I followed along on Twitter and Parler, tapping into the thoughts and conversations of thousands upon thousands who follow Q worldwide.
However, message boards, decoding “Q drops,” and even tweeting, are not exactly my cup of tea.
After an hour Googling, I couldn’t find a fiction story about Q, so, as I thought more about it, I decided to tell a story about the people who follow Q and believe Q is important. Not the whole Q community, of course, but a microcosm of the community.
Some of you reading this may have a negative opinion of Q Patriots. There’s a lot of crazy stuff floating around online, I know, but my understanding of the Q phenomenon is positive. I see it as a patriot movement, at its core. I look at people and their moral stance. By and large, I see good people, patriotic Americans, who operate from a traditional American worldview. They support Donald Trump because they believe he is saving America, and the world, from the Deep State. It takes a certain amount of study, insight, and introspection to understand that there are “dark forces” undermining our nation. For a starting point, you can listen to John F. Kennedy’s address to the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961. He is speaking in the context of the Cold War, but his description of the Deep State remains appropriate.
For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations.
(You can listen to the entire speech on YouTube at this link.)
Influences for the Novel
I realized that it would be difficult to frame a story around Q alone. My characters had to have interesting lives outside of what Q is about.
I set my story in a small town called Whiteville. It’s an actual town. In the novel, Whiteville becomes a fictional place, but the name is borrowed from a real town.
The novel has bigger, broader themes than the QAnon phenomenon: themes like marriage, family, friendship, and community. It’s about average folks struggling along, working, building friendships, raising kids, going dancing at the Crazy Horse, going boar hunting, and going to a Trump rally where they confront an Antifa gang.
One of the characters has a YouTube show as part of the 24/7 QAnon Channel called Patriots’ Soapbox. In fact, Soapbox was part of the inspiration for the story. I listened to Soapbox and noticed the wide variety of hosts, “average folks” and citizen investigators devoted to spreading QAnon info and examining the news from a patriot’s perspective. By the way, I have no official affiliation with Patriots’ Soapbox or any other YouTube channel or vlogger. Patriots' Soapbox is now on Discord exclusively, and they have a website:
Back to the question: why did I decide to write the novel? I realized that one reason I’m interested in Q is that I’m fascinated by the folks who believe in Q. I’ve become an analyst of the QAnon Patriot Community, and I wanted to mine a story from my observations.
I could tell you about my observations, but, since they are woven into the novel, perhaps you’d like to read the book yourself and meet the kind of proud Deplorables who constitute the world of Q, people who cherish their nation and believe QAnon is leading the way to a restored and responsible government of the people, for the people, and by the people.
I’m calling the novel MAGA Country. Check it out.
Lorie Denison is an author published by Fugitive Poets Press and a Contributor to The Artisan Life blog.
