The oldest person alive today is 117 years of age. Which begs the question: in our lifetimes, what will a “lifetime” come to mean? Could there come a day when the boomers stop dying? When long-term care facilities fill to overflowing, funeral homes and cemeteries begin to close, and Social Security, having flirted with insolvency for decades, finally implodes? When there are half a billion super-centenarians worldwide who should be dead, but live on?
This is the world of Keith McWalter’s upcoming speculative novel, “Lifers” (October 15, 2024, SparkPress). With compelling action, exotic settings, provocative dialogue, and trenchant social commentary, it follows a multigenerational group of characters living through a global pandemic of radical longevity. Drawing on nonfiction accounts of advances in engineered longevity such as Chip Walter’s “Immortality, Inc.” and Andrew Steele’s “Ageless,” McWalter forgoes fabulism in favor of gripping plausibility and delivers genre-bending speculative fiction grounded in cutting-edge science.
The novel follows three extraordinary women — an ex-CIA microbiologist, a Washington insider turned advocate for “gray rights,” and a philosopher of death and dying — as they navigate violent ageism, the politics of scarcity, love rivalries, and dreams of a centenarian utopia in a transgenerational struggle to redefine what it means to be mortal. Neural nets, headchip communication, deathwish algorithms, full body tattoos, and slow suicide pills form the backdrop of a near-future world where humankind must decide: do I choose to die, or am I a Lifer?
Keith McWalter’s first novel, When We Were All Still Alive, was published in 2021. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s the author of two blogs, Mortal Coil and Spoiled Guest, which present his essays and travel pieces to a loyal online following. A collection of his essays, No One Else Will Tell You: Letters from a Bi-Coastal Father, won a Writer’s Digest Award for nonfiction.
Keith is a graduate of Columbia Law School and earned a BA in English Literature from Denison University. He lives with his wife, Courtney, in Granville, Ohio, and Sanibel, Florida.
Find out more: https://keithmcwalterwrites.com/
Follow Keith McWalter on social media:
Facebook: @keith.mcwalter | Twitter: @kgmcwalter | Instagram: @kmcwalter
Interview:
Where are you from? Tell us a little about yourself!
I grew up in Mexico and western Pennsylvania. I’m a
graduate of Denison University and Columbia Law School,
and spent much of my nonwriting career in the legal and
investment banking worlds of New York and San Francisco.
I and my wife Courtney live in Granville, Ohio, and Sanibel,
Florida.
Tell us about your book? How did it get started?
Like so many of us, I’m attracted to the idea of living a long and healthy life, so I’ve read fairly widely in nonfiction accounts of longevity science and its practical applications.
Two things struck me about most discussions of longevity enhancement: increased longevity tends to be viewed as a luxury product for the rich and the few; and no one discusses the economic and social stresses that a radically longer (even if healthy) lifespan would impose on individuals, on families, and on society at large.
I wrote Lifers to dramatize those unspoken implications, and to examine ageism from a different perspective in which extreme longevity becomes commonplace and there are so many super-aged individuals that they become a force that must be reckoned with.
How do you create your characters?
There’s usually one character in each of my books who’s a loose alter ego of me, similar educational background, usually a lawyer, similar personality traits. Other characters I imagine as a function of the plot and their relationship to the “me” character, though I’m always surprised at how they develop traits and backgrounds that I never anticipated.
What inspires and what got your started in writing?
I’m a recovering lawyer who loved writing as an English major at Denison University, and dreamed of having a career as a writer. Then practicality intervened and I went to law school at Columbia and worked as a lawyer in New York and San Francisco for the next 45 years. One good thing about being a practicing lawyer is that it requires you to learn to write clearly, concisely, and persuasively. One bad thing is that it keeps you from writing for yourself.
I’m inspired by what I read – mostly fiction—and it’s only in the last fifteen years or so that I’ve devoted a significant amount of time to “creative” writing (though one can argue that any writing that’s readable and persuasive is necessarily “creative”). In that span of time I started and continue to write two blogs, Mortal Coil (personal essays and opinion) and Spoiled Guest (travel), compiled half a dozen self-published books of essays, and completed two novels, the first, a “literary” domestic novel, When We Were All Still Alive, and this latest, which is a much more commercial book in the speculative fiction/literary sci-fi genre, titled Lifers, coming out this fall.
Where do you write? Is there something you need in order to write (music, drinks?)
I need silence and privacy to write, though I often write in the presence of my wife, while she’s painting. No other stimulants necessary, though I often consult novels that I admire as I’m writing, for inspiration and to be reminded of the technicalities of the craft.
How do you get your ideas for writing?
From reading, always. I’m inspired by good writing and often think “that’s a great premise, but I would handle it differently,” or “love the execution, but I would have used a different premise.” From there it’s the act of writing. I can’t overstate the fact that, for me, the act of stringing sentences together in a logical sequence generates ideas as I go, often taking directions I never anticipated until the words are on the page.
What do you like to read?
I read fairly broadly in both fiction and non-fiction. My current fiction favorites are Ann Patchett (Bel Canto; Tom Lake) and Mark Helprin (The Oceans and the Stars; Paris in the Present Tense), though my most recent book, Lifers, owes a lot to Kim Stanley Robinson’s speculative fiction, in particular New York 2140 and The Ministry for the Future.
What would your advice to be for authors or aspiring authors in regards to writing?
Stop and ask yourself why you’re writing what you’re writing. If it’s mainly a commercial venture in the hopes of making money, then the odds of that outcome are so long that any rational person would stop and go open a stationery store instead. If you’re doing it for the sheer love of writing, or because you have a personal stake in a story that you think needs or deserves to be told, or simply to entertain yourself and some friends and relatives and network pleasurably with like-minded people, then that’s a different (and better) scenario, though still daunting. The one thing you must never, never do is assume you’ll be the one-in-a-million exception and actually make money by publishing a book.
All of this presumes that you’re a solid, competent, well-read writer and self-editor; many people are not, but have been led to believe by what I call the wannabe author exploitation industry that they are or easily could be. Read heavily in the genre you’re writing for and try to objectively observe how your writing compares. If you don’t passionately believe in the quality of your writing and the interest of your subject matter, it’s almost certain no one else will. The hard truth is that most of us are far more competent at something other than writing, and most of us can’t put our lives on hold for a couple of decades to better hone our writing craft. If you think you might need it, don’t hesitate to hire a reputable editor or “book doctor” to evaluate your manuscript and suggest revisions. Don’t rely on friends for this, as they too easily compromise their objectivity, their frankness, or both.
Anything else you’d like to share?
I hope that Lifers will be attractive to a broad range of readers, including middle-aged to older readers with interest in advances in longevity enhancement, fans of high-concept sci-fi and more literary, socially critical dys/utopian fiction, and female readers attracted to stories of transformational female empowerment.