Monday, October 24, 2016

A Bug's Life, and Halloween Stories

Once again last week I wrote two stories early in the week, then failed to finish anything the rest of the week.  I was working on a story called A Bug's Life and intended to finish it over the weekend but that didn't happen.  Hopefully I'll manage to finish it today -- I've got more work done on it in any case, and it's nearly done.

The good news is that I've plotted/started three more stories today.  One is about the replacement of the Anarchy Computer, an idea that I thought of over the weekend.  I'm calling that one Annie, which will be the name of the new AI.  The second is an idea I had yesterday about a sidekick who is being kept in stasis in some corner of the Anarchy cave until science advances far enough to fix whatever's wrong with him or her... but as usual Grandpa's simply forgotten all about why the person was there.  That one's called Until the Day.

The third story idea continues in a line from the first idea -- an efficient and self-aware computer decides to try and fix things that Grandpa never wanted to fix, so it replaces the old Anarchy Mobile with something sleek and modern and sophisticated, with lots of special abilities.  But Grandpa loves his old AMC station wagon.  I called that one New Car, for obvious reasons.

I have to admit, upgrading the Anarchy Computer makes me a little sad.  It's been a fun recurring joke that Grandpa has a crime computer like the one Batman had in the 60's tv show, only it's still there after 55 years, upgraded a bit but still a giant computer terminal desk with lots of reel to reel tape.  On the other hand, there's a lot of mileage to be had in giving Grandpa a futuristic computer with an AI.  I suspect I'll get several stories out of it, and who knows, maybe I'll figure out what happens to the old computer.  Is there a Grandpa Anarchy museum?  There ought to be.

In the meantime I posted my second Halloween story of the week this morning, Buckets of Blood.  I read through it and decided that the things I was somewhat worried about a week ago weren't real problems.  I was afraid that the conversation about the rock band was too much of a sidetrack, but it didn't bother me that much on a new read-through.

The other thing I was worried about was the side joke about the former sidekick Princess of Purple Prose.  It wasn't necessary, and I'm not sure it adds much to the story but I decided it didn't really detract too much either.  This is a story without a big surprise ending, but on the whole I think it works so I left it as is.  All in all not my best story but I think it works well enough.

My original plan was to write three Halloween stories in a row so I'd have a third one to publish next Monday, which is actually Halloween.  But I haven't written a third story, and I have several spooky-related stories I can use instead.  One of my favorites is Abjure the Realm, based on an H.P. Lovecraft story, so I'll probably post that one.

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