Indiana Jones

The awesome: The cast and characters rocked. A couple of great action scenes. The bit in the diner was fantastic.

Everything else: Sigh.

Huge spoilers ahead.

The Animal Trainer

I kind of cheated and used the same prompt again:

Write a story about someone larger than life (superhero, werewolf, sorcerer, movie star, rock star, super spy, etc.) in one of the following situations: dealing with the mundane, on vacation, on a blind date, changing sidekicks/minions/personal assistants.

I really haven’t done much with super villains. I guess that’s kind of strange, given that I’ve written a bit about superheroes. But villains, on the whole, just don’t interest me as much. I get why they’re fun and everyone loves them, but for the most part I don’t care. I guess there’s just not as much variety in villainy - I almost feel like they can write themselves. You can plug a villain into a story without really explaining much. Most of the have pretty much the same motivations and goals, so you end up treading a lot of the same ground over and over again. Plus, I feel like it’s easy to be a villain. The world gives us plenty of opportunity and reason. It’s pretty much the natural state of humankind to be dicks to each other.

That’s not to say there aren’t great villains that buck the trend. But a lot of times they feel interchangeable and disposable. Not everyone can be Magneto or Doctor Doom, I guess.

Anyway, I need some villains for my world of heroes, so here’s a fun one - Lord Drak of the Imperium, a cluster of conquered parallel dimensions over which he rules with an iron fist. Of course, the heroes of earth have frustrated him several times. I put in this idea of a time shift between the dimensions, so time passes more quickly on Earth than it does in the Imperium. Presumably, Drak would try to conquer Earth, get defeated, then flee home to come up with new weapons and strategies. After spending a couple of years on this, he returns, prepared to annihilate his old foes, just to discover a whole new generation of heroes for whom he’s completely ill-equipped. Thus the cycle begins again. It amuses me.

I also mention a new hero, Astro Jack. I’m imagining him as a ’40s-’60s era Superman-type. I may explore him more later.

Drak is probably the most generic alien warlord name ever. Drak’s little pet is heavily inspired by jinxlets, but not nearly as cute. About 900 words.

First date

Writing prompt: Write a story about someone larger than life (superhero, werewolf, sorcerer, movie star, rock star, super spy, etc.) in one of the following situations: dealing with the mundane, on vacation, on a blind date, changing sidekicks/minions/personal assistants.

This is a fun concept for a prompt. It’s easy to make it funny - a super spy picking up his dry cleaning and trying to explain all the blood stains, or a super strong hero trying to, say, pick a flower without crushing it. The basic premise has been used a lot for comedy. Back in the ’80s, Keith Giffen and JM DeMatteis wrote much the Justice League International based on this sort of humor - I’m pretty sure Blue Beetle and Booster Gold spent more time on monitor duty than actually battling evil (and I love every panel of it). Joss Whedon used it a ton in Buffy. It’s a fun way to buck expectations and have characters act completely out of type. Sure we all know that Spider-Man had to sew that suit at some point, but actually watching him struggle with the needle is hilarious.

When I was writing “Shades of Red” I had a blast writing the scenes between the Scarlet Ranger and Asta. Their personalities couldn’t be more different, and the dynamic there, with the passionate and occasionally impulsive Scarlet struggling to deal with the always calm and one-step-ahead android, was a lot of fun.

I hinted at a romantic relationship in the story between Scarlet and another hero, the Chicago Defender. (I actually have a very brief Defender story here, if you want to see him in action.) The Defender is very much like Asta; distant, emotionally closed off, and quite reserved. Scarlet would just eat that sort of thing up. She would have a blast making him squirm, then become frustrated when he ultimately never really opened up the way most women would like. Hence the problem with their relationship, and why it’s not as stable as either of them would like.

Anyway, I thought I’d take the opportunity presented by the prompt to write about their first date. I’ve been struggling with it for the last couple weeks, mostly because there’s no end in sight. It’s two people sitting down to a meal. Nothing really happens. It’s boring. It’s awkward. They’re talking exposition, mostly, and revealing little tidbits about each other’s personalities. It’s starting to ramble and I have no idea what to do with it. Just like a real date, come to think of it.

I do introduce a new character, the French mystic Jasmine, who seems like she might be fun. I was tempted to use Sevastian, but I want to keep him in a separate universe. I may need to come up with a better name for her. That’s just what popped into my head for whatever reason.

I wouldn’t say I’m done with this, but I’ll just post it before it goes any further. It’s at about 900 words.

Aftershocks is up!

Assuming you haven’t wandered over here from there already, go check out “Aftershocks” over at Every Day Fiction. This story came out of a challenge issued by the editors there, and I’m quite proud of the results! If you like mysteries, you definitely want to read it.

There are a couple of older posts about the story here and here.

Thanks to James for sending me this link on how to pronounce the main character’s name. I must admit I was apparently mangling it quite badly (I was saying it PAD-er-oh). It’s actually a pretty tough name to get my simple American tongue around. Nutty Welsh.

The Conway Case

Writing Prompt:

Write a story using three of the following: a child, chocolate sprinkles, a designer outfit, a hymnal, a secret door, water.

This is far from finished; I have so far only used 2 of the ingredients,and of course it needs an ending. I more or less have the ending in mind, I just need to get it down and clear up some of the details and fix a few things already written. I’m going to just post a piece of it - I may work on this some more and submit it somewhere.

I’m seriously considering cannibalizing a previous story, one I consider a failure, and using the elements from it that I liked to flesh this one out.

May 21st Update/Tip: Never write horror at night, in the dark, just before you go to bed.

Let them read cake!

My wife made this awesome cake for my birthday last week.

Don’t recognize the picture? Then clearly you need to head over to A Thousand Faces and check it out!

Rejection!

I received quite a nice rejection for the cake story. Their objections are not unreasonable. I will continue to shop it around a bit. My robot librarian story is currently making the rounds through the writing group, so I need to start looking for a home for that one.

I would have more but I forgot to bring the exercise I wrote this past weekend. It is frightening!

Also, pictures of cake!

I will update tonight or tomorrow morning.

So I apparently really like robots

Writing Prompt:

Write about a librarian searching for the only book never returned to her small town library.

I pounded out this  1,500-word story last night, and I rather like it. I may look around for somewhere to submit it, so I’m just going to post a little bit of it here. I also think this is the best title I’ve ever come up with (though that’s not saying much).

I should note that Dear Mr. Henshaw is a heartbreaking work of genius. Reading that book without crying proves only that you have a heart of stone.

Speed Racer

I haven’t read any of the reviews, but apparently they’ve been pretty bad. Honestly, I don’t know what the complaints are. The film was a blast. The visuals are spectacular. The story is easy to follow (including a number of flash backs that could have easily been confusing, but were worked in beautifully). It’s incredibly faithful to the old cartoon series, but awesome. Plus, there’s a monkey fighting a ninja. It seems like it might be too long (clocks in over 2 hours), but the movie is all action and it definitely doesn’t seem like it’s that long.

I guess if you are old and stuffy, the visuals might overwhelm you enough that you can’t follow the film. So maybe that’s the problem with the reviewers? I have a feeling a lot of them made their decision based on the marketing and went in prejudiced.

I’m genuinely sad that a lot of people didn’t go see Speed Racer - Iron Man absolutely slaughtered it at the box office this past weekend. With Indy coming out next week, I’m afraid Speed just isn’t going to get a chance to shine. I’m looking forward to seeing it again - the theater we saw it at was pretty bad, so I definitely want to see it again on DLP.

So, especially if you have young (i.e., under 60) kids in the family, do yourself a favor and go check out Speed Racer.

Update: I looked over some reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes, and it seems as though I was right. The reviewers mantra seems to be “Too many colors! Too shiny!” and “I loved the cartoon and this had the same story as the cartoon so this is bad!” I normally tend to side with reviewers, but this is a case where their system fails. They, as a whole, seemed to have missed the point.

Another Edit: Oops, Indy doesn’t come out for two more weeks. Narnia next weekend. Do people care about Narnia? I don’t know how to predict that one. The first one did well enough I think. Maybe if there’s some good word of mouth Speed Racer can come out on top next weekend, but it’ll be tough. The damage is probably already done.

Intergalactic Planetary!

Prompt:
Write a story using six of the following words: blast, teleport, squad, lupine, waterfall, autumn, ship, velvet, beam, amulet.

I had a lot of fun with this. There’s a lot to be said for these sorts of space adventure stories. The equation is something like this:

gruff spacefaring roughneck + adorable sidekick x villainous robots/aliens/pirates/space zombies = win!

670 words of two-fisted space adventure!