You gotta start somewhere

I've finally come up with a few ideas. An actual direction on writing.

It started with a fight. My housemate and I fight a lot. Almost constantly. But we do care for each other a great deal. In this case it was me wanting to be online but him not wanting to give up his research on buying a new recliner. I wanted to look for a good tutorial for cloning in SimPe. So after our stupid fight, I decided I'd read something from the bookshelf I hadn't yet read. This is a good way to distract me, usually, and this was no different. I grabbed King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes. But since I've read it at least a dozen times, I just sort of browsed it. So, I thought I'd look for Everything's Eventual, because it has "1408" in it and that story tends to scare the crap out of me. It's there somewhere, but something else caught my eye. It was a book I hadn't read before. I wasn't sure if it was roomie's book or if it was something he'd gotten from his sister. I can't imagine it's not his book, because it's so up his alley. It was book of short sci-fi stories. The Best of Mack Reynolds, to be exact. I've never read anything by him, but I'm sure I've seen his work on TV in the form of TV show episodes. The reason in caught my eye is that it had a profile of a man with pointed ears. He looks a little like Puck Summerdream from Veronaville. Only with brown hair. The artist wasn't listed in the book but said artist had the presence of mind to put his inscription along the shoulder of the man. The illustrator is called Ed Soyka and I'm finding it difficult not looking at his cover. You can find the book on Amazon.

Anyway. I read the first story in the book and was very amused. The authors note at the beginning of the story made reference to the last story in how they were similar. So I went to the last story and read it. I was completely blown away. I've thought many of the same things in my lifetime. I enjoy it when concepts I think of and conclude from reading are confirmed. Even if it's in fiction.

But this makes for a good start for my writing. These stories are oiling my rusty cogs and wheels. I sat down the other day and wrote an exchange between my Fae character, Laurel Winters and her fiance. I did this so I could put my thoughts on the game's alternate life states. Aliens of course are fairly self explanatory but it didn't explain the faerie's in VV or the apparent supernatural life states. I really hate the Grim Reaper in a way. He makes it difficult to explain him away. I have some ideas, but I really dislike the whole robed skeleton with a scythe bs. I'm partial to death looking like Brad Pitt. If I could reskin the Grim, I could use a Brad Pitt looking default. Or Rod Humble (raises eyebrows and gives no one in particular a sidelong glance and makes a moue with her lips). Yeah. I went there.

If Death looked like Brad I could understand why Olive Specter would want to hit that. Or a DNA merger.

But now I have ideas! I have a place to go with the Tricou family as well. I went into to SimPe and found the Tricou teens, noted them and stuck them in one dorm at La Fiesta Tech. Annoying they are all Pleasure Sims. Well, they aren't now. I changed their aspirations with the Re-Nu-Yu Orb. When I get them all learned up I'll change them back to Pleasure Sims.

I will post the exchange with Laurel and her beau, eventually (she says to her non-existent readership). She has a story.

Oh and did you know?: Johnny Smith was the name of the protagonist in Stephen King's The Dead Zone? Interesting, huh?