Here’s another page from my book about Turkmenistan. At the moment Terry and I are discussing the title of the book. In my head I’ve been calling it The Golden Age, which comes from the former totalitarian leader of Turkmenistan Saparmyrat Niyazov a.k.a Turkmenbashy (which roughly translates to “the grandfather of all Turkmen”). He declared that the 21st Century would be the Golden Age for the Turkmen people. All the propaganda showed Turkmen living in an wonderful utopia, but the reality was far from that.
So I like The Golden Age as an ironic title. But then again, for someone who has never heard of Turkmenistan or Turkmenbashy, it’s a bit uninformative (and this being a comic they might be thinking it’s something about the early days of Superman).
The book is about Azat who believes in dreaming big, getting rich, and marrying the prettiest girl in town, but sadly he lives in a totalitarian state where dreams have a habit of not coming true. It’s told through the eyes of an American Peace Corps volunteer named Joe.
Titles: An American in Turkmenistan? Joe and Azat? Two Years in Turkmenistan? Turkmenistan? 130 Degrees in the Shade?
So the name still isn’t settled, but the book is coming along nicely. I’ve got a big final wedding chapter and a little epilogue piece and then some editing and redrawing to do. I’m shooting to be done in March.