Mid February Update

 

Things have been going well.  After finishing Infinite Dojo at the end of January, I proceeded to write the second and third parts of that trilogy of stories... Princess of Pluto, and The Return of Normal.  I'm fairly pleased with both of them.

I worked for a  bit on The Body-Snatchers of Ator, and I reconceived how to structure this novella-length story -- and I wrote the first chapter/scene.  That almost counts as a short-short on its own.

However, I  turned back to other things, because I have a ton of planned, unwritten stories to work on.  I feel like the definition of a writer ought to include that you have more ideas than you can ever manage to write.  For example, after finishing Princess of Pluto, an idea for a subsequent story popped into my head, tentatively titled Real Girl.  The idea was that Anne the robotic magical girl would be visited by Eternia the Watcher, a powerful, godlike being who fancies magical girls.  What would they talk about?  What if Eternia offered to transform Anne into a real human girl?

My first thought was that of course Anne would decline.  As a robotic sorceress, she is unique in my universe -- and as an extension of Annie Two she is in many ways more powerful than any human, and has access to more knowledge.  Nor does she have to worry about dying one day.

But a day or two later I thought about it again, and I changed my mind.  Becoming human is an adventure of discovery that Annie Two hasn't quite accomplished yet (Miss Bloodraven is partly Annie's personality though).  Annie Two has been wondering recently if a computer A.I. or a robot can have a soul.  Why not become human, when she can build another magical girl Anne anyway?  What's to lose?

So I think she would agree to the proposal -- which would leave Grandpa and company in charge of a young girl who is far smarter (but not necessarily wiser?) than any normal kid.

Annie Two would have to create a nanny version of herself to watch over the newly-minted child.

I haven't written any of this down but I've been thinking about it quite a bit so I may do it.

In the meantime, I had decided to work on some older stories that are unfinished -- so I began with two unfinished stories from the end of Book 9 that I was convinced should exist.  These were:  A)  a story involving Wings of Liberty, B)  a story called My Gun Is Sharp (the title of that volume of stories) and C)  a story about what happened to the reincarnated Gentleman Brawler, which I called Tremors of the Earth.

I had already decided to combine A & B into one story -- a story that includes Wings of Liberty and is titled My Gun Is Sharp.  I also had plans to include the villain Holy Hatemonger, so I wrote a partial opening scene for this story.

Then I switched up again, went back even further to Book 2, and wrote two proposed stories for that volume:  Hot Stuff and  Get Down Tonight, two stories involving the disco trolls.

I finished both of those this past weekend.  Now I'm looking at the other (much larger) unfinished story from that volume, World of Hero.  I think I've figured out how to make this story work.  The really good news is that there's a lot already written, and it looks like I can use much of it.  I could maybe pound together the first part of this story in just a few days.

Anyway, that's what I've been working on.  A little of this, a little of that.