Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Camp Nano Update 7/26
So far this month I've written 23 stories totalling 32,658 words. (For those keeping score at home, I managed all of 9 stories in the first six months of 2016.) I validated my Camp NaNoWriMo already and claimed my win badges -- I forgot to do this once before and it's always bugged me, so I didn't want to wait. I had lowered my goal from 30,000 words to 25,000, but I'm already over 30,000 anyway.
Here's where I am:
Opportunity of a Lifetime 7/3, 917 words
Eclipsed In Time 7/3, 822 words
Status Report 7/4, 1,424 words
Chaos and Order 7/5, 1,913 words
Above the Law 7/6, 1,160 words
Muse 7/7 1,017 words
Shadow Secrets 7/10 2,347 words
Prison World 7/11 1,091 words
Short Circuit 7/12 959 words
Meanwhile In Frosthaven 7/13 1,068 words
The Wight Stuff 7/14 1,647 words
Meanwhile On Planet Zorlthrax X9 7/18 1,176 words
Ripperology 7/18 1,304 words
Meanwhile In Intersect 7/19 1,063 words
Gloom and Doom 7/20 3,683 words
Blessed and Cursed 7/21 1,696 words
Bombs Away 7/22 1,784 words
Daughters of Anarchy 7/22 804 words
When We Last Left Our Heroes... 7/25 1,162 words
Girl Gravity 7/25 1,458 words
Green-Skinned Alien Babe 7/25 838 words
The Further Adventures of Grandpa Anarchy 7/25 1,490 words
Llahna's Girl 7/26 1,552 words
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Book Six, Renumbered!
I finished Meanwhile In Intersect at around 2 AM Tuesday. Two days later I finished Gloom and Doom. Today's project was Blessed and Cursed, which is a story that links the "dimensional adventures" section of the book (which is what I've been writing for the last 20 days) to the "outer space adventures" section of the book, which includes stories I wrote in April and a bunch that are plotted and only partially written.
Today I renumbered all of the stories in book six. This was a bit of an undertaking.
I'm not exactly sure when I started numbering my stories. At first I had only five. Then I wrote two more. Then I challenged myself to write a new story each day for NaNoWriMo in November of 2012. It's easy to remember this date, because it was the last month that City of Heroes existed. In fact, I'm pretty sure the announcement of the closure of City of Heroes on the last day of August 2012 was what spurred me to start writing Grandpa Anarchy stories again. The character is based on one I made in the game, and even though I only played that character for a few levels, the idea behind the character stuck with me and a few years later I wrote my first few stories.
Throughout November 2012 I started a new story each day, and I eventually completed all of them by the Spring of 2013. I challenged myself to write a new story every week for 2013, and by the end of the year I had a ton of Grandpa Anarchy stories written. At some point, I think it was the Summer of 2013, I started numbering the stories and laid out what I thought would be my first book and my second and third books. I know that by August or September of 2013 I had enough stories to fill three books, and I'd gone back through the stories in the first book to rework them and in some cases break stories that didn't work into 2 or 3 separate stories. In the spring of 2014 I did Camp NaNoWriMo and wrote quite a few more stories. I've tried to add more stories every year, but when it came to Camp NaNoWriMo for April 2016 I tried something different.
I had an idea to do a "Secret Crisis Wars" kind of story in which Grandpa's universe gets rebooted, and things get changed around, then they reboot again and maybe change everything back at the end. I had another idea involving a "Doom Patrol" kind of supergroup. By January 2016 I had tossed these and a few other ideas into a folder for the proposed sixth book, Weird Tales of Weird Anarchy. And when April came around I worked on this. I only got a few stories done, but I had a numbered sequence of stories for my book by then. Then I inserted several stories into the sequence and had to renumber everything. I did that a couple of times.
When I picked up the thread again in July I was having some problems with what I'd written and planned to write. My original idea had included Grandpa and company getting tossed out into space, but then in Legal Eagle I'd had them attack a creature that teleports people to random dimensions. And then, for reasons unexplained, in the next story Strike the Worm they did not wind up in another dimension, but wound up on a different planet in this dimension, and had a lot of adventures in space but in this dimension (mostly only planned or half-written to date).
But! I had also written Happy Jack in which they wound up in the interdimensional city of Intersect, and I had written a bit on my "Doom Patrol" story which placed it in Intersect as well. How did they wind up in other dimensions? I was planning for this to all happen later after the space adventures, but ultimately it made a lot more sense that the events in Legal Eagle which promised to send them to another dimension actually did so. Rather than jump directly from Legal Eagle to Strike the Worm, I should toss in a few stories of their adventures in other dimensions, and even move up Happy Jack and Gloom and Doom to happen during this sequence, before they wound up back in regular space. This would be my "Dimensions Arc" which came before the "Space Arc".
Thus I started inserting stories early into my numbered list. I would number them "175.5" and "179a, 179b, 179c, 179d" etc. I was also adding stories from the very beginning involving a plot hatched against Grandpa Anarchy that involved the League of Former Sidekicks, so there were a lot of new stories to insert into the early part of the list. Eventually I had 14 stories that I was trying to insert between other number storie,s and it became a real mess. After finally finishing Gloom and Doom last night (my "Doom Patrol" tribute story), I finally had a list of completed stories that stretched from the beginning of the book right up to Strike the Worm. I had one possible story left to write, and I also needed a bridge story to explain how we get from the end of Gloom and Doom to the start of Strike the Worm. Once those two stories were written, I could begin to rework and finish all of the "Space Arc" stories. So it seemed like as good a time as any to renumber everything.
My new story order:
178 Opportunity of a Lifetime
179 Shadow Secrets
180 Superpowered Self Defense
181 Eclipsed In Time
182. Legal Eagle
183 Chaos and Order
184 Status Report
185 Prison World
186 Happy Jack
187 The Wight Stuff
188 Meanwhile in Frosthaven
189 Meanwhile in Intersect
190 Meanwhile in Zendeth Sector (in progress)
191 Meanwhile on Planet Zorlthrax X9
192 Gloom and Doom
193 Blessed and Cursed
194 Strike the Worm
195 The Nonhumans
196 Painted Into A Corner
197 Bombs Away (in progress)
198 Intergalactic Order of Space Babes (in progress)
199 Girl Gravity (in progress)
200 Green-Skinned Alien Babe (in progress)
201 Llahna's Girl (in progress)
202 The Further Adventures of Grandpa Anarchy (in progress)
203 Punchathon (in progress)
212 Above the Law
213 Muse
214 Complete (in progress)
217 X Factor (in progress)
Monday, July 18, 2016
Meanwhile On Planet Zorlthrax X9 (Camp NaNo Update for July 18)
So far this month:
Opportunity of a Lifetime 7/3, 917 words
Eclipsed In Time 7/3, 822 words
Status Report 7/4, 1,424 words
Chaos and Order 7/5, 1,913 words
Above the Law 7/6, 1,160 words
Muse 7/7 1,017 words
Shadow Secrets 7/10 2,347 words
Prison World 7/11 1,091 words
Short Circuit 7/12 959 words
Meanwhile In Frosthaven 7/13 1,068 words
The Wight Stuff 7/14 1,647 words
Meanwhile On Planet Zorlthrax X9 7/18 1,176 words
Ripperology 7/18 1,304 words
I wrote nothing much Friday through Sunday, but I wrote two brand new stories on Monday and I may not be done yet.
The Wight Stuff: Sadly this story revolves around a bad pun. I did a lot of research into things before I wrote it, and consequently I liked most of the idea behind the story, but when it came to the ending the pun was all I really had. I'm not sure how well it works, but it involves the Brontë sisters, their shared universes, and a few related things. It involves paracosmoses and the city of Intersect, which is my version of Cynosure -- a city at the crossroads of dimensions.
Meanwhile On Planet Zorlthrax X9 is a story idea that I had Sunday morning but I wasn't sure there was an actual story to the idea. But Monday morning I figured out the way to tell it that gave it a kind of kick at the end, which is really all most of my stories have. What I like most about this one is that it's kind of a companion piece to Meanwhile in Frosthaven and Meanwhile in Intersect. The first deals with what Sam Solo and Two-Fisted Timmy are up to while the rest of the League of Former Sidekicks is hunting down Grandpa Anarchy, the second is intended to deal with what Grandpa and the two future sidekicks that are with him are doing in Intersect. Zorlthrax X9 kind of covers what the rest of Grandpa's companions are up to, although you don't really learn that much. The whole idea tickles me, and now I'm also wondering if / when I write a story about how Geothermal Jenny and company are handling their search for Grandpa and company, I should give that one a Meanwhile title as well. But Zorlthrax X9 absolutely has to be the final one in the sequence.
Ripperology I've been struggling to turn Meanwhile in Intersect into a story with a plot, and I also had decided to write at least one Circuit Girl story. I created a story with the preliminary title Jack, in which the plan was for John Haggard (Happy Jack) to appear through the gate in Grandpa's Anarchy Cave, at a time when Circuit Girl was Grandpa's sidekick. But that by itself wasn't a story, and I began to explore the idea that Haggard was on the trail of Jack the Ripper -- or maybe Jack the Ripper appeared in Meanwhile In Intersect, jumping from Intersect to earth via the gateway in Haggard's bar and the one in Grandpa's cave. But those weren't fully formed ideas either. I had an idea that Jack the Ripper skipping through time was something that happened a lot to Grandpa, but when I started reading up on the Whitechappel murders and on all of the tropes surrounding the Jack the Ripper myth, I came up with a very different story that didn't involve anyone travelling to/from Intersect at all. Instead, it involves people travelling back in time to try and find out who Jack the Ripper really was -- and this is the thing that Grandpa Anarchy has seen over and over again. And as I'd planned to do, I made this a story that happens while Circuit Girl is Grandpa's sidekick. She doesn't get to do all that much, but it's more than she's ever been allowed to do on-screen before now. Mission accomplished, I say!
I'm pretty proud of what I came up with for this one. Because of how I structured the story, you don't get to actually see Grandpa or Circuit Girl in London, 1888, which would have been a lot of fun to write, but it would not have set up my punchline well. I think I came up with a nice twist ending for this one. ^_^
Now my only question is whether I really still need a story involving Circuit Girl and John Haggard, and what can I possibly make out of Meanwhile In Intersect...
Opportunity of a Lifetime 7/3, 917 words
Eclipsed In Time 7/3, 822 words
Status Report 7/4, 1,424 words
Chaos and Order 7/5, 1,913 words
Above the Law 7/6, 1,160 words
Muse 7/7 1,017 words
Shadow Secrets 7/10 2,347 words
Prison World 7/11 1,091 words
Short Circuit 7/12 959 words
Meanwhile In Frosthaven 7/13 1,068 words
The Wight Stuff 7/14 1,647 words
Meanwhile On Planet Zorlthrax X9 7/18 1,176 words
Ripperology 7/18 1,304 words
I wrote nothing much Friday through Sunday, but I wrote two brand new stories on Monday and I may not be done yet.
The Wight Stuff: Sadly this story revolves around a bad pun. I did a lot of research into things before I wrote it, and consequently I liked most of the idea behind the story, but when it came to the ending the pun was all I really had. I'm not sure how well it works, but it involves the Brontë sisters, their shared universes, and a few related things. It involves paracosmoses and the city of Intersect, which is my version of Cynosure -- a city at the crossroads of dimensions.
Meanwhile On Planet Zorlthrax X9 is a story idea that I had Sunday morning but I wasn't sure there was an actual story to the idea. But Monday morning I figured out the way to tell it that gave it a kind of kick at the end, which is really all most of my stories have. What I like most about this one is that it's kind of a companion piece to Meanwhile in Frosthaven and Meanwhile in Intersect. The first deals with what Sam Solo and Two-Fisted Timmy are up to while the rest of the League of Former Sidekicks is hunting down Grandpa Anarchy, the second is intended to deal with what Grandpa and the two future sidekicks that are with him are doing in Intersect. Zorlthrax X9 kind of covers what the rest of Grandpa's companions are up to, although you don't really learn that much. The whole idea tickles me, and now I'm also wondering if / when I write a story about how Geothermal Jenny and company are handling their search for Grandpa and company, I should give that one a Meanwhile title as well. But Zorlthrax X9 absolutely has to be the final one in the sequence.
Ripperology I've been struggling to turn Meanwhile in Intersect into a story with a plot, and I also had decided to write at least one Circuit Girl story. I created a story with the preliminary title Jack, in which the plan was for John Haggard (Happy Jack) to appear through the gate in Grandpa's Anarchy Cave, at a time when Circuit Girl was Grandpa's sidekick. But that by itself wasn't a story, and I began to explore the idea that Haggard was on the trail of Jack the Ripper -- or maybe Jack the Ripper appeared in Meanwhile In Intersect, jumping from Intersect to earth via the gateway in Haggard's bar and the one in Grandpa's cave. But those weren't fully formed ideas either. I had an idea that Jack the Ripper skipping through time was something that happened a lot to Grandpa, but when I started reading up on the Whitechappel murders and on all of the tropes surrounding the Jack the Ripper myth, I came up with a very different story that didn't involve anyone travelling to/from Intersect at all. Instead, it involves people travelling back in time to try and find out who Jack the Ripper really was -- and this is the thing that Grandpa Anarchy has seen over and over again. And as I'd planned to do, I made this a story that happens while Circuit Girl is Grandpa's sidekick. She doesn't get to do all that much, but it's more than she's ever been allowed to do on-screen before now. Mission accomplished, I say!
I'm pretty proud of what I came up with for this one. Because of how I structured the story, you don't get to actually see Grandpa or Circuit Girl in London, 1888, which would have been a lot of fun to write, but it would not have set up my punchline well. I think I came up with a nice twist ending for this one. ^_^
Now my only question is whether I really still need a story involving Circuit Girl and John Haggard, and what can I possibly make out of Meanwhile In Intersect...
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Meanwhile In Frosthaven -- 7/13 Camp NaNo Update
I feel like I haven't done as much writing as I should have, but I've done an awful lot of plotting.
Over the weekend I did not write much. I was working on a story on Friday and then did not work on it much until Sunday night, but it's a longer story -- several scenes -- titled Shadow Secrets. I finally finished it Sunday. I'm not sure I'm happy with the results, but I like the general idea of the story and I rewrote the first scene to make it much more action-packed.
I also started working Sunday night on the story Prison World. I had an ending in mind for this, and I changed the ending several times. When I went to bed Sunday it was still a jumble of ideas but by Monday morning I'd figured out what I wanted to do with it and finished it. I think it works.
Tuesday morning I started and finished a new story, Short Circuit. I've been writing all these stories about Kid Continuity and this one kind of popped into my head -- what if I wrote a story where Kid Continuity and her brother meet Grandpa Anarchy when she's still very young? What if they meet Circuit Girl as well? Suppose this happened at a comic convention? Before I knew it I had the story written. My original idea was that I could place this story at the very beginning of the first book, and with its reference to Grandpa Anarchy comics and its foreshadowing of characters who would become far more important later on, it would make a perfect first story to introduce Grandpa Anarchy. I've always kind of felt like the first story I actually wrote -- Remember This -- is actually a terrible story to introduce Grandpa with, given that it's not very funny and not quite in the spirit of most of the Grandpa stories. I even went so far as to rearrange the order of the first few stories so that I could have several of my funnier stories appear first.
Well, now that Short Circuit is finished, I'm not actually sure if it's a good idea to place it in the first book. I'll have to think about it for a while. I'm not sure if it's actually that funny or novel, and maybe I'm being self-indulgent in tossing in characters that nobody has any reason to know anything about until much later on, assuming they even read that far. (Kid Continuity wouldn't appear until book three, I think.) At the same time now that I've done this I'm kind of thinking that one or two stories involving Circuit Girl would be a good idea. In the story Remember This, Circuit Girl is already dead before the story starts, but her death has grown in significance with how many other stories I've written that link to it or mention it, and I've since described her as one of Grandpa's best and longest-lasting sidekicks. Which is something you'd totally miss if you read the current stories in the order I have them, because several sidekicks appear before her and she never actually appears "on screen" at all. So maybe it would be a good idea to insert a couple of stories involving her, if I can come up with something good.
Anyway! Today I created a series of new stories. The plan was to work on Doom, my Doom Patrol tribute story, which I decided to rename Gloom and Doom since I actually have a story called Doomed in the first book, one of my earliest stories. This story involved a group called the Bastions of Gloom, the strangest hero supergroup ever (hence the Doom Patrol tribute). But first I decided I should work on Interlude or Here and There, which I think are the same story but it isn't an actual plot, it's just "Geothermal Jenny and company are still trying to find Grandpa Anarchy". That may or may not be something I can spin into an actual story, we'll see. Before working on it I re-read Opportunity of a Lifetime and Status Report, and I was actually more interested in figuring out what Sam Solo and Two-Fisted Timmy were up to -- these are the two oldest members of the League of Former Sidekicks, who stayed behind when Jenny and company left earth in her interstellar saucer.
I started thinking, what if they broke into the Anarchy Mansion while Grandpa was off planet? Who might they run into? What if the shadow creature returned to earth to look for Grandpa Anarchy, and ran into them instead? And before I knew it I had dialog in my head, and I started writing Meanwhile In Frosthaven. And this story potentially spawned another, because I imagined them entering the mansion, perhaps for the first time in fifty years, or at least for the first time in quite a while. Grandpa never changes anything. How long has that picture of him fighting Doctor Zero Hour and his giant Atomic Zombie been hanging on the wall in the entryway above the stairs? For fifty years, perhaps?
And immediately Two-Fisted Timmy starts talking about the man who painted it (has it always been a painting? I think so). Old Romany guy who lived in New York's East Village. Grandpa saved him long ago and he was so grateful that he painted not one giant picture -- but several, maybe ten. He would give a new one to Grandpa every year or two on Christmas. (I only know what two of the paintings are -- there's one of Grandpa and his former partner Guy Shadow fighting some villain.) Anyway, the moment I wrote "on Christmas" I realized that there's a Christmas ghost story hidden in this detail somewhere. At the moment it's tentatively titled The Final Painting, although I haven't figured exactly where I'm going with it.
I started two other stories today that are unrelated to anything I've bee working on. I decided that I need a sidekick called the Pompadour'd Pamplemousse, whose power stems from his amazing hair, maintained with a grapefruit hair gel. Later I also decided I needed a sidekick named Butt Rock Boy, and when I looked up "Modern Butt Rock" online (I was 100% right that Five Fingered Death Punch is considered butt rock -- Butt Rock Boy will wear one of their tee shirts, and also insist that Nickleback is the greatest rock band ever and that Creed was a really good band, honest!) I found an article that tries to define exactly what butt rock is, and I realized that not only is Butt Rock Boy a big fan of butt rock, but also has a fairly cerebral take on what it is. And I started writing dialog, and of course the villain who has this discussion with him on what is or isn't butt rock has to be none other than Death Medal, and so I have another story partially written. For now the title is simply Butt Rock Boy, but a possible better title is Unified Theory, which is part of the title of the article I read -- Toward A Grand Unified Theory of Butt Rock, by Mark Lee on the Overthinking It web site.
All that, and I've plotted another story in my head after listening to this month's free HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast while on a walk. Their subject this week is Wuthering Heights, and after hearing some of the backgroun history on Emily Bronte, I have an idea in my head involving a weather-controlling undead creature called the Wuthering Wight, which may take place right before or after Gloom and Doom.
So far this month:
Opportunity of a Lifetime 7/3, 917 words
Eclipsed In Time 7/3, 822 words
Status Report 7/4, 1,424 words
Chaos and Order 7/5, 1,913 words
Above the Law 7/6, 1,160 words
Muse 7/7 1,017 words
Shadow Secrets 7/10 2,347 words
Prison World 7/11 1,091 words
Short Circuit 7/12 959 words
Meanwhile In Frosthaven 7/13 1,068 words
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Camp NaNo Report for July
It's time for an update! Hope springs eternal, and just as I did in April I signed up for the July Camp NaNoWriMo with the goal of getting some serious writing done. Then, of course, I wrote next to nothing for the first two days. But! I then sat down and got to work!
I am trying to complete the same set of stories that I was working on back in April and May. These are stories for a sixth book of Grandpa Anarchy short stories, this one tentatively titled Weird Tales of Weird Anarchy, and in this one I'm trying to do something a bit different -- I'm trying to string together a series of independent stories that tell an overall story or all link together in some way. Here's more or less what I accomplished back in April:
Superpowered Self Defense - Finished
Legal Eagle - Finished
Strike The Worm - Finished
The Nonhumans - Finished
Painted Into A Corner - Finished
Bombs Away - Unfinished
Intergalactic Order of Space Babes - Unfinished
Girl Gravity - Unfinished
Green-Skinned Alien Babe - Unfinished
Llahna's Girl - Unfinished
Further Adventures of Grandpa Anarchy - Unfinished
Punchathon - Unfinished
Happy Jack - Finished May 3rd
Doom - Unfinished, In Progress
Now, the thing is I originally planned out a series of stories, then as I worked on them I started retroactively fitting new stories in between the stories I'd already planned. So when I went back to this group of stories in July, I did the same thing again. First, I decided that the details of how the shadow creature is defeated in between its appearance in Superpowered Self Defense and the legal consequences of that defeat in Legal Eagle should really be a separate story in its own right, so I wrote Eclipsed In Time. At the same time I came up with a separate but concurrent plot in which the League of Former Sidekicks plan to get rid of Grandpa Anarchy, and this required a "prequel" story which I wrote called Opportunity Of A Lifetime, which takes place just before Superpowered Self Defense.
On top of that, I decided to move another story, Shadow Secrets, so that it happens just before Superpowered Self Defense. So now three of the first four stories in my collection didn't exist or weren't in that chronological order previously.
But that's not all. I had already started a story sometime in late May or early June called Chaos and Order which I place right after Legal Eagle and before the story that originally followed it, Strike the Worm. Because at the end of Legal Eagle Grandpa and company are tossed into another dimension, but then in Strike the Worm they turn out to not be in another dimension after all, and that seemed like a waste and kind of a cheat to me -- I wanted some adventures in other dimensions first. Ideally, I wanted at least three. So not only did I manage to finish Chaos and Order a couple of days ago (it needs a rewrite, really), but I have also outlined two other stories that go between it and Strike the Worm. For now I'm calling these two stories Prison World and Here and There, but those are working titles only.
And as for my League of Former Sidekicks plot, I've written the second story in that sequence, called Status Report. Which is also a weak title, I might need to come up with a better one.
So now my story order is:
Opportunity of a Lifetime - finished 7/3
Shadow Secrets - in progress
Superpowered Self Defense - finished
Eclipsed In Time - finished 7/3
Legal Eagle - Finished
Status Report - finished 7/4
Chaos and Order - Finished 7/5
Prison World - unfinished
Here and There - unfinished
Strike the Worm - finished
The Nonhumans - finished
Painted Into A Corner - finished
Bombs Away - Unfinished
Intergalactic Order of Space Babes - Unfinished
Girl Gravity - Unfinished
Green-Skinned Alien Babe - Unfinished
Llahna's Girl - Unfinished
Further Adventures of Grandpa Anarchy - Unfinished
Punchathon - Unfinished
Happy Jack - Finished May 3rd
Doom - Unfinished, In Progress
I've also been working on some stories that happen after all of the interdimensional and intergalactic adventures. These include two stories I had previously plotted, Complete and X Factor, and two brand new stories that I wrote today, Above the Law and Muse. These stories form a kind of separate chain of Kid Continuity stories that happen before and mostly after the adventures in dimensions and space:
Shadow Secrets - Kid Continuity and Wayback Boy delve into the mystery of who was Guy Shadow, partner to Grandpa Anarchy in the 1950's.
Above the Law - Grandpa Anarchy and the Continuity Crusaders stop a would-be time-travelling assassin, but have to figure out what to charge him with and where to lock him up.
Muse - A conversation between Kid Continuity and her brother, and a clue to where her powers come from.
Complete - Through the miracle of time travel, Kid Continuity secures the last piece of her collection of Grandpa Anarchy fiction, But why is it that no copies survived to the present day? Did someone destroy them on purpose?
X Factor - Kid Continuity sets out to solve the last big Grandpa Anarchy mystery -- who was Miss X, Grandpa's first sidekick? Unfortunately Miss X is still alive and does not want people to know who she is.
So for those keeping score, that's six stories completed in the first seven days of July. So far so good!
I am trying to complete the same set of stories that I was working on back in April and May. These are stories for a sixth book of Grandpa Anarchy short stories, this one tentatively titled Weird Tales of Weird Anarchy, and in this one I'm trying to do something a bit different -- I'm trying to string together a series of independent stories that tell an overall story or all link together in some way. Here's more or less what I accomplished back in April:
Superpowered Self Defense - Finished
Legal Eagle - Finished
Strike The Worm - Finished
The Nonhumans - Finished
Painted Into A Corner - Finished
Bombs Away - Unfinished
Intergalactic Order of Space Babes - Unfinished
Girl Gravity - Unfinished
Green-Skinned Alien Babe - Unfinished
Llahna's Girl - Unfinished
Further Adventures of Grandpa Anarchy - Unfinished
Punchathon - Unfinished
Happy Jack - Finished May 3rd
Doom - Unfinished, In Progress
Now, the thing is I originally planned out a series of stories, then as I worked on them I started retroactively fitting new stories in between the stories I'd already planned. So when I went back to this group of stories in July, I did the same thing again. First, I decided that the details of how the shadow creature is defeated in between its appearance in Superpowered Self Defense and the legal consequences of that defeat in Legal Eagle should really be a separate story in its own right, so I wrote Eclipsed In Time. At the same time I came up with a separate but concurrent plot in which the League of Former Sidekicks plan to get rid of Grandpa Anarchy, and this required a "prequel" story which I wrote called Opportunity Of A Lifetime, which takes place just before Superpowered Self Defense.
On top of that, I decided to move another story, Shadow Secrets, so that it happens just before Superpowered Self Defense. So now three of the first four stories in my collection didn't exist or weren't in that chronological order previously.
But that's not all. I had already started a story sometime in late May or early June called Chaos and Order which I place right after Legal Eagle and before the story that originally followed it, Strike the Worm. Because at the end of Legal Eagle Grandpa and company are tossed into another dimension, but then in Strike the Worm they turn out to not be in another dimension after all, and that seemed like a waste and kind of a cheat to me -- I wanted some adventures in other dimensions first. Ideally, I wanted at least three. So not only did I manage to finish Chaos and Order a couple of days ago (it needs a rewrite, really), but I have also outlined two other stories that go between it and Strike the Worm. For now I'm calling these two stories Prison World and Here and There, but those are working titles only.
And as for my League of Former Sidekicks plot, I've written the second story in that sequence, called Status Report. Which is also a weak title, I might need to come up with a better one.
So now my story order is:
Opportunity of a Lifetime - finished 7/3
Shadow Secrets - in progress
Superpowered Self Defense - finished
Eclipsed In Time - finished 7/3
Legal Eagle - Finished
Status Report - finished 7/4
Chaos and Order - Finished 7/5
Prison World - unfinished
Here and There - unfinished
Strike the Worm - finished
The Nonhumans - finished
Painted Into A Corner - finished
Bombs Away - Unfinished
Intergalactic Order of Space Babes - Unfinished
Girl Gravity - Unfinished
Green-Skinned Alien Babe - Unfinished
Llahna's Girl - Unfinished
Further Adventures of Grandpa Anarchy - Unfinished
Punchathon - Unfinished
Happy Jack - Finished May 3rd
Doom - Unfinished, In Progress
I've also been working on some stories that happen after all of the interdimensional and intergalactic adventures. These include two stories I had previously plotted, Complete and X Factor, and two brand new stories that I wrote today, Above the Law and Muse. These stories form a kind of separate chain of Kid Continuity stories that happen before and mostly after the adventures in dimensions and space:
Shadow Secrets - Kid Continuity and Wayback Boy delve into the mystery of who was Guy Shadow, partner to Grandpa Anarchy in the 1950's.
Above the Law - Grandpa Anarchy and the Continuity Crusaders stop a would-be time-travelling assassin, but have to figure out what to charge him with and where to lock him up.
Muse - A conversation between Kid Continuity and her brother, and a clue to where her powers come from.
Complete - Through the miracle of time travel, Kid Continuity secures the last piece of her collection of Grandpa Anarchy fiction, But why is it that no copies survived to the present day? Did someone destroy them on purpose?
X Factor - Kid Continuity sets out to solve the last big Grandpa Anarchy mystery -- who was Miss X, Grandpa's first sidekick? Unfortunately Miss X is still alive and does not want people to know who she is.
So for those keeping score, that's six stories completed in the first seven days of July. So far so good!
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
End of April Camp NaNoWriMo and 2016 Goals Update
1. Write two Grandpa Anarchy Stories Each Month.
January
Jan 18: Gorgon Gun (#160)
Jan 19: Sharp Dressed Man (#163)
February
Jan 22: Old Boys Club (#171)
March 29: Superpowered Self Defense (#178)
March
April 17: Legal Eagle (#179)
April 23: Strike The Worm (#180)
April
April 23: The Nonhumans (#181)
April 26: Painted Into A Corner (#182)
May
May 3: Happy Jack (#190)
------------------------------------
So I'm doing well on my first goal of 2 Grandpa Anarchy stories a month.
For Camp NaNo I started quite a few stories and finished about half of them:
Superpowered Self Defense - Finished before April.
Legal Eagle - Finished
Strike The Worm - Finished
The Nonhumans - Finished
Painted Into A Corner - Finished
Bombs Away - Unfinished
Intergalactic Order of Space Babes - Unfinished
Girl Gravity - Unfinished
Green-Skinned Alien Babe - Unfinished
Llahna's Girl - Unfinished
Further Adventures of Grandpa Anarchy - Unfinished
Punchathon - Unfinished
Happy Jack - Finished May 3rd
Doom - Unfinished, In Progress
So since March I can generously say I started twelve stories and finished five. That's not nearly what I intended to accomplish in May, but it's a lot better than I managed through the first three months of the year, so I'm happy. I want to continue writing through May and see if I can't turn that into a dozen finished stories, or more.
Some of this is tentative -- for example, I'm pretty sure that Llahna's Girl actually takes place after Happy Jack and Doom. One or two other stories may follow Doom before I write Llahna's Girl as well.
By the way, the rest of Book 6 currently looks like this:
Some of this is tentative -- for example, I'm pretty sure that Llahna's Girl actually takes place after Happy Jack and Doom. One or two other stories may follow Doom before I write Llahna's Girl as well.
By the way, the rest of Book 6 currently looks like this:
Secret Crisis Wars
Secret Crisis Wars 2 -- The Beginning of the End
Secret Crisis Wars 3 -- Quantum
What Comes Next
Tyrone the Great
Complete
Another Secret Crisis Wars
Shadow Secrets
Truthiness
X Factor
Pharmacopia
The King Am I
Bad Trip
A Thousand Ninjas
High Performance Chocolate
High Performance Chocolate
Most of these are just ideas -- and in some cases, such as the Secret Crisis Wars stories, it's one big idea that I thought might stretch over several stories, but there's no guarantee I'll be able to do that. The Secret Wars 3 - Quantum contains the germ of an idea that I actually have already placed in Doom, so that title may go away. Complete, Shadow Secrets, and X Factor are all stories with solid plots however -- kind of a trilogy of sorts. Those three I should be able to complete easily.
So that's where things stand at the moment.
Monday, April 25, 2016
April -- Camp NaNoWriMo Report
April is Camp NaNoWriMo. Like previous years, my plan was to write a Grandpa Anarchy story a day, and 30,000 words overall. It hasn't really gone so well, but at least I'm getting some stuff done.
As I laid out last time, I had a plan (there's always a plan, until you get punched in the face). I was going to write a series of stories in which Grandpa Anarchy had adventures out in space. I had some story ideas for this, and I had three potential sidekicks in mind to work with -- Quantum Uncertainty Boy, Magical Mimic Cosplay Girl, and Suck It Up Buttercup.
Then in late March I tried to get some writing done in preparation for April. I wrote a story at Norwescon that started out with Grandpa Anarchy teaching superpowered martial arts to some of his former and yet-to-be sidekicks. For this, I included the characters that I knew were going to form their own supergroup -- Magical Midriff, Magical Manic Pixy Dreamgirl, You Go Girl, and Boy Gravity.
(On a side note, I also read the Boy Gravity story Sharp Dressed Man back in April I think at writer's night, and went back and revised my description of the character a bit, both in that story and in the previous story Asphalt Cemetary.)
For the purposes of my story I also included a new sidekick who was a speedster named the Spit Second. I hadn't done a speedy character before, and she seemed to fit in nicely.
The villain that shows up in the story is a walking void creature called the Shadow of Evil, who somehow was a comic book villain come to life. You punch him, you get teleported to another dimension. I'd used him in a story called The Shadow Out of Joe's Mouth and Grandpa had failed to defeat him, but I brought him back for this story. Superpowered Self Defense, and demonstrated that Grandpa has since figured out a way to counter the creature. Although the story ends there, it gave me an idea.
I had not really figured out how Grandpa and company get into space -- but another of my story ideas floating around was to bring back a superpowered lawyer named Legal Briefs and have him represent Grandpa Anarchy. This had been suggested at another writer's night a few months back, after I read the story Old? It occurred to me to have Grandpa and everyone involved defeat the shadow creature (off-screen) and then be put on trial in intergalactic court on murder charges, because living voids are people too. The way you defeat the Shadow of Evil is with a solar eclipse (according to the comic book), and the way you get a solar eclipse on demand is to teleport the shadow creature through space and time to where you know one will occur.
This meant Wayback Boy was involved, and since he was involved so was Kid Continuity.
I wrote Legal Eagle at the beginning of April, kicking off my Camp NaNoWriMo. But I struggled with making the followup story. At the end of Legal Eagle, everyone winds up in a random dimension courtesy of another, similar shadow creature. This, then, was how I got my heroes into space and how I launched them onto a series of adventures. My only problem was the sheer size of my team -- the two members of the Continuity Crusaders, four future members of The Nonhumans, Grandpa's current sidekick and the three other future sidekicks I'd planned to use for my stories -- plus Legal Eagle the lawyer into the bargain. That added up to twelve people counting Grandpa Anarchy -- a very unwieldy number. But off I went. Next up on the docket -- the story called The Nonhumans, in which my cast of unafilliated former sidekicks decided to form a team.
At this point my idea was that they would wind up on an alien planet, then get rescued by Jennie Nova and Llahna (more characters!). And I spun the first part of that idea into a story about them fighting giant worm creatures on this alien planet while holding a discussion about what to name their new supergroup. I wanted to establish several of the characters as a new supergroup, and I like the setup where, in the middle of a fight, the heroes are holding a very mundane discussion. It's funny on the face of it, so this seemed like a good direction to go.
I finished The Nonhumans, but it didn't feel like it worked. The big revel was not only Jennie showing up to save them, but that she knew the name of their new supergroup before they'd finished forming it. My idea was that there were already a bunch of comics based on their group, thanks to some fourth-dimensional beings that could see into the past and future and liked to make comics for some strange reason. But even though I hinted at the aliens and hinted that Grandpa knew all of this ahead of time, it really didn't seem to flow well. The surprise wasn't much of one, and didn't seem to directly tie into what came before (the fight with the giant worms).
At the same time I was working on the next story, which involved all of the unafilliated characters becoming temporary members of the Society of Intergalactic Space Babes (with the silver bikini uniform -- I thought this would be a funny direction to go), and also Kid Continuity getting wrapped up in reading all of the new comics she'd just discovered and getting really excited about them. I had some ideas about where that second line of reasoning could go, but again, the story wasn't coming together in my head. I decided that I had at least two different stories here -- one, in which they're conscripted into the Space Babes and have to wear the uniform, and one, where Kid Continuity gets excited about the comics, and where that leads. These are the stories Intergalactic Order of Space Babes (working title), Further Adventures of Grandpa Anarchy, and Punchathon.
So I set out to write the bikini uniform thing as a separate story, but I was still trying to improve The Nonhumans and so I also went back to that and decided that it was also at least two stories -- one about their fight with the giant worms, and one where they're rescued and it's revealed that their supergroup is already named, and that there's a comic about them. I came up with a new ending for the worm fight story that I think is much funnier -- at least it works on some level. This story I called Strike the Worm.
I struggled a bit with my revised story The Nonhumans, still about the superhero name and the team's rescue. It all fell into place when I decided that there wasn't just a comic book, but a movie about them (or a tri-dee/interactive entertainment thing -- who knows what entertainment will be like in a highly-advanced intergalactic civilization?) The movie idea helped bring the incongruity into sharper focus faster, which makes the end of the story have more of an impact. Thus I finished a completely different (new, improved!) version of The Nonhumans.
I briefly considered writing a story about the interactive movie itself -- how the main characters could go to experience it, and wind up playing each other's parts -- but after some thought I really couldn't see an actual plot or anything interesting based on that idea.
The bikini uniform story was much harder to figure out. I called it Wear the Uniform, which was a terrible working title. At some point I realized that a story about them wearing new uniforms wasn't really a story, so it morphed into a situation where they suddenly had to go on a mission. And I still think that will work -- I've written the beginning and the end, but making them meet in the middle is still confusing me. But for now, this is the story I call Bombs Away.
Along the way I spun off a couple more ideas into separate stories. The team registering as superheroes of the galactic empire -- separate story, called Girl Gravity. One guy falling in love with Jennie's alien sidekick -- separate story, called Blue-Skinned Alien Babe, and then a second story idea based on that called Llahna's Girl.
But my new problem was that I introduced the idea of comics and a movie based on the new supergroup -- and then multiple stories went by before I explored that any further. That didn't work at all. The heroes would want to ask questions. My only problem? Explaining how and why the comic books exist wasn't a story idea in and of itself.
And then, as I tried to drift off to sleep last night, it came to me -- and I realized it was an idea I'd thought of a day or two earlier, then forgot about. I got up and wrote it down this time, and that is now the basis for a story called Painted Into A Corner.
So at present my proposed book Weird Tales of Weird Anarchy begins with these stories that I've written or am working on:
Superpowered Self Defense
Legal Eagle
Strike the Worm
The Nonhumans
Painted Into A Corner
Bombs Away
Intergalactic Order of Space Babes
Girl Gravity
Blue Skinned Alien Babe
Further Adventures of Grandpa Anarchy
Punchathon
(maybe one or two more stories -- possibly Doom and Secret Crisis Wars)
Llahna's Girl
As I laid out last time, I had a plan (there's always a plan, until you get punched in the face). I was going to write a series of stories in which Grandpa Anarchy had adventures out in space. I had some story ideas for this, and I had three potential sidekicks in mind to work with -- Quantum Uncertainty Boy, Magical Mimic Cosplay Girl, and Suck It Up Buttercup.
Then in late March I tried to get some writing done in preparation for April. I wrote a story at Norwescon that started out with Grandpa Anarchy teaching superpowered martial arts to some of his former and yet-to-be sidekicks. For this, I included the characters that I knew were going to form their own supergroup -- Magical Midriff, Magical Manic Pixy Dreamgirl, You Go Girl, and Boy Gravity.
(On a side note, I also read the Boy Gravity story Sharp Dressed Man back in April I think at writer's night, and went back and revised my description of the character a bit, both in that story and in the previous story Asphalt Cemetary.)
For the purposes of my story I also included a new sidekick who was a speedster named the Spit Second. I hadn't done a speedy character before, and she seemed to fit in nicely.
The villain that shows up in the story is a walking void creature called the Shadow of Evil, who somehow was a comic book villain come to life. You punch him, you get teleported to another dimension. I'd used him in a story called The Shadow Out of Joe's Mouth and Grandpa had failed to defeat him, but I brought him back for this story. Superpowered Self Defense, and demonstrated that Grandpa has since figured out a way to counter the creature. Although the story ends there, it gave me an idea.
I had not really figured out how Grandpa and company get into space -- but another of my story ideas floating around was to bring back a superpowered lawyer named Legal Briefs and have him represent Grandpa Anarchy. This had been suggested at another writer's night a few months back, after I read the story Old? It occurred to me to have Grandpa and everyone involved defeat the shadow creature (off-screen) and then be put on trial in intergalactic court on murder charges, because living voids are people too. The way you defeat the Shadow of Evil is with a solar eclipse (according to the comic book), and the way you get a solar eclipse on demand is to teleport the shadow creature through space and time to where you know one will occur.
This meant Wayback Boy was involved, and since he was involved so was Kid Continuity.
I wrote Legal Eagle at the beginning of April, kicking off my Camp NaNoWriMo. But I struggled with making the followup story. At the end of Legal Eagle, everyone winds up in a random dimension courtesy of another, similar shadow creature. This, then, was how I got my heroes into space and how I launched them onto a series of adventures. My only problem was the sheer size of my team -- the two members of the Continuity Crusaders, four future members of The Nonhumans, Grandpa's current sidekick and the three other future sidekicks I'd planned to use for my stories -- plus Legal Eagle the lawyer into the bargain. That added up to twelve people counting Grandpa Anarchy -- a very unwieldy number. But off I went. Next up on the docket -- the story called The Nonhumans, in which my cast of unafilliated former sidekicks decided to form a team.
At this point my idea was that they would wind up on an alien planet, then get rescued by Jennie Nova and Llahna (more characters!). And I spun the first part of that idea into a story about them fighting giant worm creatures on this alien planet while holding a discussion about what to name their new supergroup. I wanted to establish several of the characters as a new supergroup, and I like the setup where, in the middle of a fight, the heroes are holding a very mundane discussion. It's funny on the face of it, so this seemed like a good direction to go.
I finished The Nonhumans, but it didn't feel like it worked. The big revel was not only Jennie showing up to save them, but that she knew the name of their new supergroup before they'd finished forming it. My idea was that there were already a bunch of comics based on their group, thanks to some fourth-dimensional beings that could see into the past and future and liked to make comics for some strange reason. But even though I hinted at the aliens and hinted that Grandpa knew all of this ahead of time, it really didn't seem to flow well. The surprise wasn't much of one, and didn't seem to directly tie into what came before (the fight with the giant worms).
At the same time I was working on the next story, which involved all of the unafilliated characters becoming temporary members of the Society of Intergalactic Space Babes (with the silver bikini uniform -- I thought this would be a funny direction to go), and also Kid Continuity getting wrapped up in reading all of the new comics she'd just discovered and getting really excited about them. I had some ideas about where that second line of reasoning could go, but again, the story wasn't coming together in my head. I decided that I had at least two different stories here -- one, in which they're conscripted into the Space Babes and have to wear the uniform, and one, where Kid Continuity gets excited about the comics, and where that leads. These are the stories Intergalactic Order of Space Babes (working title), Further Adventures of Grandpa Anarchy, and Punchathon.
So I set out to write the bikini uniform thing as a separate story, but I was still trying to improve The Nonhumans and so I also went back to that and decided that it was also at least two stories -- one about their fight with the giant worms, and one where they're rescued and it's revealed that their supergroup is already named, and that there's a comic about them. I came up with a new ending for the worm fight story that I think is much funnier -- at least it works on some level. This story I called Strike the Worm.
I struggled a bit with my revised story The Nonhumans, still about the superhero name and the team's rescue. It all fell into place when I decided that there wasn't just a comic book, but a movie about them (or a tri-dee/interactive entertainment thing -- who knows what entertainment will be like in a highly-advanced intergalactic civilization?) The movie idea helped bring the incongruity into sharper focus faster, which makes the end of the story have more of an impact. Thus I finished a completely different (new, improved!) version of The Nonhumans.
I briefly considered writing a story about the interactive movie itself -- how the main characters could go to experience it, and wind up playing each other's parts -- but after some thought I really couldn't see an actual plot or anything interesting based on that idea.
The bikini uniform story was much harder to figure out. I called it Wear the Uniform, which was a terrible working title. At some point I realized that a story about them wearing new uniforms wasn't really a story, so it morphed into a situation where they suddenly had to go on a mission. And I still think that will work -- I've written the beginning and the end, but making them meet in the middle is still confusing me. But for now, this is the story I call Bombs Away.
Along the way I spun off a couple more ideas into separate stories. The team registering as superheroes of the galactic empire -- separate story, called Girl Gravity. One guy falling in love with Jennie's alien sidekick -- separate story, called Blue-Skinned Alien Babe, and then a second story idea based on that called Llahna's Girl.
But my new problem was that I introduced the idea of comics and a movie based on the new supergroup -- and then multiple stories went by before I explored that any further. That didn't work at all. The heroes would want to ask questions. My only problem? Explaining how and why the comic books exist wasn't a story idea in and of itself.
And then, as I tried to drift off to sleep last night, it came to me -- and I realized it was an idea I'd thought of a day or two earlier, then forgot about. I got up and wrote it down this time, and that is now the basis for a story called Painted Into A Corner.
So at present my proposed book Weird Tales of Weird Anarchy begins with these stories that I've written or am working on:
Superpowered Self Defense
Legal Eagle
Strike the Worm
The Nonhumans
Painted Into A Corner
Bombs Away
Intergalactic Order of Space Babes
Girl Gravity
Blue Skinned Alien Babe
Further Adventures of Grandpa Anarchy
Punchathon
(maybe one or two more stories -- possibly Doom and Secret Crisis Wars)
Llahna's Girl
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