That Valentine Story

I published Gate Into Danger on Monday, and that left me with only one story in my queue -- my most recent  story Beside Myself, which I'm not sure is in a publishable state yet.  So I need to write more than one story this week.

I got off to a good start on this goal by finishing The Ghost and Miss Bloodraven today.  It's probably a bit too long but I think I like how it ends.  I'll have to reread it next week and see how I feel about it.  In the meantime, I have two other stories that are partially written -- The Cephalopod That Befriended The Wind and a story currently titled Murderbot 150, which is nearly done but needs a better title.  I also have plans for a follow-up story to The Ghost and Miss Bloodraven entitled My Sister the Computer.  Today I had an epiphany about this particular story -- it will be the last one to feature the sidekick known as F8Wasp.

Then I remembered that I wanted to make a Valentine's story, which I would have to complete this week and publish next Monday.  So I began working on that.

To begin with, I needed to figure out who Lucy Smith was.  Grandpa married her in 1933.  I had the idea that she was the last of his female companions from the 1920's -- all of whom has some sort of special power.  But what was her power?  Had she continued to work as a heroine?  What about their son, Steve Smith, born in 1934?

It seemed very unlikely that Grandpa's son or wife would have been famous heroes and that neither has ever been mentioned in one of my other stories, so I decided that after she got married, Lucy gave up being a heroine, and their son also was never interested in that lifestyle.  I have already established  that Grandpa's granddaughter Claire kind of frowns on his heroic life, and doesn't want her daughter involved in what Great-Grandpa Anarchy does.

It also seemed like Grandpa and his wife were separated or divorced quite a long time ago, before 1950 at least, which is when he first takes on a sidekick.  I considered that maybe she separated from him during World War II when he was gone for several years -- but then, of course, I know that at the end of the war he slept with the Soviet Nova, a heroine from our Soviet allies.  It seemed quite logical that Lucy found out about it and that was the main reason for the separation.  I decided that they never actually got a divorce, but never reunited either.

Suddenly I wanted to tie in Grandpa's descendants to the Nova family.  I have the names of several members of the Nova family -- Doctor Thomas Nova, Elias Nova, Major Tom Nova and his wife Destiny Nova, their daughter Jennie Nova.  They are a space-faring family like you got in science fiction space opera from the 1930's through the 1950's or 1960's.

With a little work, I established that Elias Nova had a sister named Sarah Nova, and Sarah married Grandpa's son Steven Smith in 1969.  Steve was a 35 year old accountant at the time, and Sarah Nova was also trying to live a normal life and ignore her famous heroic parents.  They had two children -- Grandpa's granddaughters Angela and Claire.  Claire's daughter is Elsie, who appeared in my three-part story Return to Amethyst, but Elsie has a cousin named Kelli who is a year older than her.  Angela and her daughter Kelli are also new additions.

This last part I established specifically because I had decided that Lucy's powers were due to a magic ring, and that Elsie -- who would be twelve in 2017 -- would discover her great-grandmother's ring.  I think she and Kelli will discover it together, along with some sort of passkey to a space station built by the Novas.  Elsie and Kelli know that Grandpa Anarchy is their great-grandfather, and they probably also know they're related to the Novas (they are second cousins to Jennie Nova), but they have no idea that their great-grandmother was also a heroine.  Nor do their parents know, I think.

I updated my timeline to reflect all these new additions.  ^_^

All of this, of course, means that I have yet another story on my hand -- maybe more than one, but at the very least I created a story file called Grandmother's Magic Ring.  Right now I'm working out the details for my Valentine's Day story, but I've figured out who Grandpa's wife was -- her full name was Lucy Brandwein, and the ring is something her father bought for her at an open air market somewhere in the Middle East.  He was a very religious Jewish man and had no idea that the ring was demonic in nature.  It allowed Lucy to transform into a sort of powerful half-demon heroine:  Hellfire Lass.

And only Grandpa Anarchy (and possibly Unpossible Man, and Dark Dr. Dark) know that his wife Lucy and Hellfire Lass were the same person.  Until Elsie finds the ring, anyway (along with a journal I think).  ^_^

There's possibly another story about how Lucy's father bought the ring and how she discovered its powers, but I don't know if I can work that into a Grandpa Anarchy story or not.