Hackernaut, And Five More Letters

Last night I managed to knock out another new story, Hackernaut.  I think it works, but it may not be one of my best.  But I've had the idea for the story for a while, so I was happy to be able to shape it into something, at least.

This puts me at 28 stories on the year, I think -- 4 a month through July.  It's 2 weeks into August so I'm still technically about 2 stories behind, 3 by the end of this week, so I should try to write  three more by Saturday at least.  I also need to start editing my stories for the book in earnest, but things are looking pretty good overall.

I've been working from my list of story ideas and slowly using them up, and I haven't really added a lot of new story ideas in a while.  This morning, I realized that Hackernaut was my first completed Grandpa Anarchy story with a title beginning with the letter H.  That left five letters which I haven't used:  Q, U, X, Y, and Z.

I have an unfinished story idea titled Your Stupid, Stupid Minds.  I decided to create four more story ideas for the other four letters.  I came up with Zero Hour (the return of Doctor Zero Hour, or the appearance of Doctor Zero Hour the Fourth actually -- he's a recurring Nazi villain that Grandpa keeps killing).  For U I created a file called Unpossible, which would likely be an exploration of Unpossible Man.  I don't really know his back story or who his major nemesis is -- he's kind of an oversized, amiable Superman type, very strong and virtually invulnerable.  I'm sure I can explore his story a bit.

I didn't have any particular ideas for X or Q.  A quick search through my Anarchy World Background file revealed a villain that I'd mentioned before but had never actually appeared in any story -- the Quantum Questioner.  I created a file called Questionable Judgment as a story involving him.

I was stuck on something beginning with the letter X, though.  Not that there aren't a lot of uses of the letter -- X-Men, X-Force, Planet X, Doctor X.  X-Games, Xtreme Sports.  X is one of those "cool" letters.  I just couldn't come up with a title and/or idea for a Grandpa Anarchy story that appealed to me.  The best I could imagine was a villain named X-Patriot, but I also considered a story involving an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend villain.  Ultimately I saved a file with various ideas under the title of "X", to be explored more fully at a later date.

Edit:  by late evening I'd written about 85% of Gutbucket Magic.  I have a general idea of how it ends, but I may not know exactly how to bring it about just yet.  I should be able to finish it tomorrow though, but it's getting late so I have to stop here.

I created a couple more files, Murder Is Painless based around the idea that killing a sentient vampire should theoretically be comparable to killing a normal human, or at least somewhat more of a moral quandry than simply killing a mindless beast, and Death of a Mook, which would be an examination of the real impact of the death of a lowly minion on his friends and family.

By morning I'd created yet another story idea file:  The Eagle Has Landed, based on the idea  that Grandpa slept with a Soviet superhero agent during the last days of the Third Reich, and now his Russian great-granddaughter has come to visit....

All of these files are no more than a title and a short idea or a few sentences... but this is how many of my stories began.  It gives me a place to start and usually a direction to head in.