The Making of
Tesla and the Pyramid
2015 - 2021
Origins
The original concept was a slow-burn psychological period thriller about a family moving to a remote homestead around the turn of the century. That idea eventually blossomed into a surreal, esoteric sci-fi set during the era when Nikola Tesla was in Colorado Springs. Scalar physics + lost civilizations + quantum entanglement anomalies. The Shining meets The Lighthouse.
In 1906, a free-spirited woman moves to a remote Utah homestead with her widowed older sister and nephew, where they begin to experience bizarre and terrifying natural phenomena.
2022
Actually... it should be a modern Spielbergian technothriller
Somewhere along the way, the abstract period thriller became something much bigger (the real-world rabbit holes are no joke). The decision was made to shelve the trippier story and pivot hard to a full-on da Vinci Code-style technothriller. Much of the original metaphysical and scientific research done for the earlier concept survived into what would become Tesla and the Pyramid. The original story of the frontier sisters included planned sequences at Nikola Tesla's Colorado lab, witnessing breakthroughs and other bewildering new realities.
2022 - 2023
The final boss of rabbit holes
The truly intensive research phase was an 18-month grind into a bottomless parallel universe.
Each thematic and topical category evolved into its own packet full of atomic research notes, usually curated as a single paragraph for each individual point of interest. These raw collections would become the novel’s myriad revelations and information payloads.
The only rule: every claim had to be verified as real and factual, or it was tossed out.
Mind maps proved to be an excellent way to organize and group everything. Each individual atomic note from the full archive of research was transferred to a specific mind map, so it sat in the same thematic category as its brethren.
2023
Plotting and narrative structure
The true challenge of this project was how to convert everything into a workable story. The real trick was pulling in so many disparate, seemingly disconnected topics into one coherent system.
The answer that ultimately worked was to draw inspiration from a love of music, specifically sheet music notation. Each major thematic and topical category was assigned a unique lane that ran like a player piano roll, or musical staff, with every action and info payload beat placed at a specific point on the timeline. Each clue thread required a well-timed promise>>progress>>payoff arc.
That turned out to be the best solution. That's what was the most intuitive approach to visualize how the story would unfold.
Tron, The Matrix, Alice in Wonderland, even Star Wars… the underlying plot structure was inspired by the classics. Oddly, one parallel emerged early — as a sort of Lord of the Rings for the globalist age.
[Spoilers ahead!] RevealHide
Close readers may notice Tesla’s notebook is a literal “Ring of Power/energy,” and that our everyday hobbits are being pursued by a type of Nazgûl Black Riders, embodied by Metatron. There’s a shadowy power structure looming just out of sight, felt more than understood. They must traverse the known world, finding allies, getting betrayed, and quickly realizing how completely outmatched they are. When all is lost, Victoria and the British swoop in like the ride of the Rohirrim. Then, the journey culminates climbing a literal Mount Doom—the pyramid—where the heroes cast the “science ring” onto the fire in the middle.
From the archives: Character sketches + casting inspo fun
2023 - 2024
Drafting
Visions & Revisions
The first draft was written over several months, through the fall & winter, daily between the hours of 4 am and 8 am—a rather unpleasant, though somewhat holy time slot selected because the author was unwilling to hand over his best cognitive hours to his employer at the time. Get up. Wrap up in a coat. Make some tea (Faust-style). Light a candle. Lay out narrative sheet music + research packets. Open Google Docs.
That entire first draft was written in a more common third-person past tense. Andromeda was the main character, and she was the anthropologist, not Tony. Tony was named Owen Koviak, and he was the CIA whistleblower. Cassian was named Lucas Wilder.
When the entire first draft of the book was completed, it became evident that the characters needed to be swapped, and that the story would be stronger from Tony's close POV in first-person present, to really be inside his head as he descends into the Alice in Wonderland odyssey. It required a brutal page one rewrite.
