It feels like a long time ago when I attended a Trump rally (as a fan of politics) on a chilly day in April 2016. The experience inspired me to write a satirical book imagining what it would be like if Donald Trump were to become president.
I wrote the book over the spring and summer, and it was published in early August. After I began writing, Donald Trump won the GOP nomination. He then defied pollsters and won the presidency, leaving my fictional book still hanging on as a part of our reality, rather than planted forever in an alternate universe.
But now that Donald Trump’s presidency has begun, my book and real life must start to diverge.
President Trump’s Month: An Epistolary Novella imagines a Donald Trump presidency through a look at a sequence of “official documents,” such as executive orders, presidential proclamations, transcripts of speeches, and more. In the book, President Trump’s term appears to last around a month, rivaling that of William Henry Harrison. However, exactly what happens at the end, including President Trump’s whereabouts and whether the whole thing is his fault, is intentionally unclear and may be addressed in a sequel.
Now that we have entered the setting of President Trump’s Month, I am comparing the events of the book to real life with great interest.
Here is one early prediction that has come true:
According to reports, Donald Trump decided to keep Childe Hassam’s Avenue in the Rain hanging in the Oval Office while ordering the removal of Edward Hopper’s pair of works depicting rural Cape Cod scenes during the Great Depression. (See “Trump Brings Churchill Bust Back to Oval Office,” CNN.com, January 20, 2017.)
President Trump’s Oval Office decor decision is in line with what I predicted last year in my book. Here is the relevant excerpt from Chapter 5, “Statement by the Press Secretary on the President’s Morning Activity (Official Release, January 21, 2017)”, page 26:
Visit this blog for more about similarities between my book’s events and real life, as things unfold. In the meantime, for more information about President Trump’s Month: An Epistolary Novella, please visit presidenttrumpsmonth.com. Also, be sure to check out the latest book trailer.
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Ron Leshnower is the author of President Trump’s Month: An Epistolary Novella, a short work of fiction that imagines a Trump presidency through an examination of executive orders, presidential proclamations, and other “official” documents.
Follow him on Twitter (@hillocrian) and visit hillocriancreative.com.
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