Story Starts – The mutant dog story

Over the years, I’ve started hundreds of stories.  Unfortunately, too often I just have the idea for the opening scene and that is about it.  I would write these opening scenes because if nothing else they were great writing exercises, but there was always the hope that one day I’d figure out what to do with it.  These have languished on my hard drive for years, but now I’ve come up with a plan for some of them.  I won’t be finishing the stories, instead I’ll just share them here.

There are three reasons I’m doing this.  First, what else am I going to do with them?  Second, these are a sample of my writing, and maybe after reading them you’ll buy one of my ebooks, which can be found here.  And third, for awhile I posted “Free Story Ideas,” which were ideas I had for novels and such that I knew I’d never get around to writing, but I’d like to read.  So I gave these ideas to the world in the hope someone might be inspired by them to write a bestseller.  And I guess this is just a continuation of that, but instead of giving you the basic idea of the story, I give you the first few hundred words. 

Anyway, I hope you find the following, at least, interesting.

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Story Starts – The mutant dog story

Of all the things Joe had learned to do over the past year, this was the one he hated the most.  The first time, it had taken him almost five minutes just to behead the corpse; what with the dozen or so swings with the ax and all the vomiting.  Now, he could dismember a corpse in under a minute and barely feel a thing. 

Mister Deneen had died during the night, probably of a heart attack.  Before he had been a cubical Sisyphus: each day writing memos and reports few people read, only to write more the next day, and the next, and the next.  Now he was bait.

Joe quickly set the container of homemade napalm under the pieces of the body and hooked the trip cord to Mister Deneen’s spine.  Then he and Karen – who had watched over him with a shotgun – retreated to a nearby apartment building.  Most of the apartments had been looted and ransacked, but there were a few that had somehow been overlooked.  This resulted in a sizable haul of canned foods.  While there was a chance there was more to find, it wasn’t that wise to stay in the same place for long, especially with the trap they just set.

It did not take long for a pack of mogs to find the body; drawn to the fresh blood.  Joe and Karen watched from a second-floor balcony as half-a-dozen fought over their last meal.  Joe was starting to wonder if he had messed up the trip cord when an explosion lit up the dim morning.  Several of the mogs were only injured by the blast, so Joe finished them off with his rifle.

When they were sure they were dead, he and Karen made their way to the pile.  As she stood watch, he piled the bodies together, then doused them in gasoline.  Some of their fur still smoldered, and they were soon ablaze filling the morning with a thick, oily smoke.

They then grabbed their bags, heavy with all the cans, and started back to the compound. 

Not long after they started Kared asked, “Do you know what today is?”

Joe stopped and thought for a bit.  “I don’t even know what month it is.”

“It’s August 29th.” After a pause she added, “It’s my birthday.  I’m eighteen now.”

Joe looked at the girl, her hair unevenly cut short, her face covered with splotches of mud and blood, and tried to remember what that meant from before.  Finally, he said, “Be sure you register to vote.” He then turned and kept walking.

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The idea for this story began as I watched the movie Cloverfield.  I … thought it was okay.  There were good things, but there were also issues.  I know giant, unstoppable monsters attacking a city is a genre, but I can’t suspend my disbelief that our guns and bombs do nothing.  We have missiles that can blow through twenty feet of reinforced concrete, but they bounce off lizard skin.  I have a really hard time buying that.

I think I was still in the theater watching the movie when I started to wonder at a better way to use monsters.  One big monster is just one big target that – will cause a lot of destruction – but should be taken out fairly quickly.  But tens of thousands of smaller monsters?  They could be killed, but there would always be more to take their place.  Over the next week I was thinking about this, and I had the idea of these smaller monsters being something like a “mutant dog,” which my brain shortened to mog, and that was that.

I had the idea of setting a trap for mogs being the opening, but what of the rest of the story?  Well, it would be your standard group of survivors trying to rebuild the world while fighting off the occasional monster attack.  If I did have some idea for a story, I didn’t write it down.  All I had was this prologue.  Which was only about 90% finished and in need of some revising.  I do think my writing as gotten better in the … eighteen years since I first wrote this.

The reason I’m posting this today, is that when I first wrote this, I added in it being August 29^th just as a … easter egg/wink/ripoff of Terminator’s Judgment Day.  It was in late July as I was reading through some of the stories I’d started to see what I could use as this first Story Start, and I came to it being August 29^th in this story and thought, I should post this on August 29^th.  That’s it.

Oh, and if you’re an American citizen over 18, be sure you’re registered to vote.

My idea for the next Avatar

Some sequels are just the first thing again, but with a higher budget.  Some sequels expand on the original story and take it in new and interesting directions.  And some sequels try to be too different and end up falling off a cliff.  It must have been about a year or so ago when I saw some rumors about Seven Havens, the new Avatar series.  To be honest, my knee jerk reaction was it seemed like they were flirting with falling off a cliff.  But I said I would give it a watch before making up my mind.  Of course I don’t have a Paramount+ account, but maybe they have a free month trial version.  So I’ll probably watch it someday, but it probably won’t be for some time.

Anyway, after I heard these rumors, I started to wonder, Well, what would I do if I had to write the story of the Avatar after Korra?  After some thought, I came up with an idea.  I figured I should write it up, but then other stuff happened, and I kind of forgot about it.  But when the trailer for Seven Havens came out, I figured if I was ever going to write it up, I should do it now.  So here’s my basic idea for what I would have done if I was writing a series for the Avatar after Korra.

First off, who is the villain of the series?  There isn’t one.  My idea is that the various nations have grown tired of war, and with the Air Nomads working to keep the peace, there isn’t much room for the Sozins and Kuviras of the world to start.  There are still minor disagreements and wars, but they are much smaller.  The result is the Avatar showing up just seems like an escalation.  Do we really need to go nuclear over a couple of small islands?  So there aren’t that many human reasons for the Avatar to get involved.

There are still natural things the Avatar can get involved in.  If there’s a hurricane or a volcanic eruption, the Avatar will show up to either try to disperse it or to save everyone they can.  Which is great, but what about the boring day to day?  What does the Avatar do then?

I imagine that at some point Varrick invents VarrickVision or something, so most people in the world would have some version of a TV.  So I imagine the Avatar having various shows.  Like they could go to locations in the world/spirit world and host historical/nature documentaries.  Or they could have a show going around and talking with people with rare bending abilities, or try to find people with new bending abilities.

So it would have just been … worldbuilding the series?  I’m sure some personal drama could be figured out.  Like maybe the Avatar has a younger sibling who, at first, is excited to be that close to the Avatar.  But they grew up with stories of Aang and Korra fighting armies and mechs, and they get upset when the realize they’re related to the “boring” Avatar.  I imagine this Avatar’s “Team Avatar” would be more … corporate.  There would be one to oversee the media accounts of the Avatar, and one would handle any legal issues.

That was my idea.  Would it have worked?  No.  If, somehow it had been greenlit, it would have been canceled after a season.  Instead of battles and high drama it would have just been exploring new areas of this world.  The point would be that not every Avatar needs to deal with the end of the world.  Or perhaps we could just be setting things up for the next Avatar.  Like things seem peaceful, but maybe the series ends with some unknown secret society succeeding in assassinating the Avatar.  What then?

 

Writing Newsletter Second Quarter 2026

 

The big news for this quarter is I republished my story “Enigma.” It had been published years ago on a site, but after X months without sales, the rights reverted back to me.  And then it sat on my hard drive for over a decade until I finally got around to dusting it off and polishing it up.

My story for this quarter was “Want To,” which I managed to publish on the last day of the quarter.  I had some difficulties with this story, which you can read about here.

On my blog I posted “Moon Light” as part of the Artemis II hoopla.  I also reposted “Vote With Your Fists” because, well, there are days/weeks/years when I wish there really was a “Punch-Your-Politician Day.”

I finally posted my first story on my Buy Me a Coffee profile.  “Old Story” is, possibly, a tad-bit, semi-autobiographical.  Maybe.

On my Kofi profile I reposted “Worst Foot Forward,” which I wrote back in the good ol’ days when conspiracy nuts were seen as conspiracy nuts and weren’t in charge of everything.

I reposted my poem “Stealer of Daylight” because I was really feeling the burn of the “Gainful Employment Dragon.”

I also posted/reposted some microfiction and haikus, which can be found respectfully on my Untitled Works Page and my Haiku Page.

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This was a rough quarter.  Between work, the collapse of society, and trying to get stuff done in my garden, there’s also been some family issues and heat waves.  It seems whenever it gets above about 80 “freedom” degrees, I lost all interest in being productive.  I slog through the day, then only have a couple hours late at night with the AC cranked to try to do everything I want to do.  And summer’s just started.

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Image from Pixabay.

An idea for Doctor Who

I don’t remember when I first heard about Doctor Who.  But I think it was sometime in the 90’s when I found out the PBS station aired Doctor Who at, like 1AM on Sundays.  With that I was able to watch, I believe, all of the Seventh Doctor.  And sometime I watched the Eighth Doctor’s movie, but I can’t remember if it was before or after the revival with the Ninth.

My favorite Doctor is Ten, and my favorite companion is Martha, with Donna as a close second.  So those two seasons are, in my opinion, peak Doctor Who.  Not to besmirch Eleven, Amy, Rory, Clara, etc., but while they had good episodes, it seemed like the great episodes were becoming fewer and fewer.  And this has just continued since then.  Some years ago, I did a rewatch of New Who, but just of the “good” episodes.  So the Martha and Donna seasons I watched almost in their entirety, but I think I only watched like three episodes from all of Twelve’s run.  I’m not saying everything was bad, it’s just, again in my opinion, most episodes were just okay.  By the time we get to Thirteen, I barely remember any of their run.  The writing wasn’t as good, and I ran out of steam.

Then we get to Fourteen, which I found a bit … desperate.  It was an interesting idea, but I didn’t think the writing was up to it.  Then comes Fifteen.  Their arrival was interesting, but again I didn’t think the writing was up to the task.  It almost seemed like they were given the choice, “Do we write really compelling stories, or do we write so-so stories, but with a stunt?” and they picked the stunt.

Then came Sixteen.  No offense to Billie Piper, but really?  As I said, bringing back David Tennant for Fourteen was a bit … desperate, and bringing back a familiar face again so soon seemed to just scream desperation.  I believe I groaned when she appeared because, to me, it indicated the future wouldn’t be compelling stories, just stunts.

And now the future is … who knows.  Several months ago, I read some speculation that Piper might only do one or two specials before regenerating into a brand new Seventeen.  Now I’ve read speculation that she might not even come back, and if Doctor Who does continue, there might be a time jump, like from Eight to Nine.  But I had been thinking of a way for Piper to have a short-lived role as the Doctor without completely wiping it all away.  I started typing this up before all the latest news, and I figured I might as well finish this now before it becomes even less relevant. 

My Christmas/Easter/Arbor Day/Whatever Special would start with PiperDoctor saying something like, “This is interesting.” She’d then start picking out an outfit.  But before she settles on something, the TARDIS jerks and rushes off. 

We then see a group of women late at night in some university dorm.  They’re probably having some makeshift party, and it’s possible one of them has some alien artifact they’re hiding from the others.  Then the TARDIS lands which is very surprising. 

PiperDoctor – in parts from like six outfits – steps out and starts with the frantic, weird stuff is going on Doctor speak, that’s also to calm them from seeing a blue box appear out of thin air.  The women introduce themselves, and one is introduced either with a nickname, or something like Mary, or something odd happens just before they get to say their name.  The reason is I’d like this woman’s real name to be hidden for as long as possible, it being Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.  The reason her name might be given as Mary or whatever, is because either she was sent to school under a false name for her safety, or this was her first mission to track down reports of alien objects at the university.

Whether Kate introduces herself or not, there’s still something odd that happens.  And that is the Doctor … changes.  It’s not a regeneration, but either because of all the odd regeneration stuff lately, or there’s some weird field being emitted from some alien artifact, or more likely both, the Doctor’s cells aren’t settling into a final form.  Which means PiperDoctor is gone after five minutes, replaced by XDoctor.  But the thing is still happening, so after another five minutes or so, we get YDoctor, and so on.  Probably, the time between changes speeds up, so we could have twenty or thirty actors play the Sixteenth Doctor.  In the end, they might only appear as the Doctor for a few seconds, which would be a great time to throw in some easter eggs. 

The idea I had for who could be XDoctor, is Idris Elba.  I think a decade or so ago there was talk of him playing the Doctor, and this might be a fun way for it to happen.  Also, my idea is this takes place in a woman’s dorm, and – I don’t know how English universities handle these things – but there’s probably some, upperclassman, or matron, or someone who makes sure nothing gets out of hand.  And this one has a rule of “No men after dark.” And with the TARDIS appearing and everything, these women are getting a little loud so the matron or whatever comes to investigate, and now there’s a man in their rooms.  So they shove ElbaDoctor into the loo, but the matron knows that trick and demands them to come out, with ElbaDoctor giving a falsetto, “Give me a minute.” But fortunately, it’s been about five minutes so ElbaDoctor changes into YDoctor, played by some young actress, so the matron leaves in a huff.

With so many actors playing the Doctor, but only for a few minutes, I thought we could have some fun.  Like I’m sure there’s some child actor that’s big in England, who would be thrilled to be the Doctor for three minutes.  Another possibility would be an actor who’s an amputee.  I imagine the Doctor looking at their arm stump for a second or two, then shrugging and continuing on.

The way out of this, is probably the one woman turning over the alien artifact, and the Doctor needing various bits of things to rebuild it into something that would fix their form.  As they’re finally getting all the pieces together, the Doctor is changing every few seconds, so it’s up to Kate to make the last connection and hit the big red button.

We are then left with Sixteen’s final form, which I’d say maybe played by an English actress with Japanese ancestry.  There are hugs and maybe this is when Kate either gives her full name instead of the nickname, or reveals what her real name is.  And Sixteen is like, “I should have known,” or whatever.  Sixteen then gets in the TARDIS and flies off to the present-day Kate.  When Sixteen steps out, Kate is like, “I have waited so long to see you,” and they share a laugh.  You could even have the Doctor take a scarf or something from young Kate and include it in Sixteen’s outfit. 

Would this have stunts and fan service?  Yes.  But I think – if handled correctly – it could also be fun.  And what more could we want from Doctor Who?

Story list update

Back in March, I gave the random tip to keep track of everything you can for your writing.  To recap my situation, in Excel I had a Submission List where I kept track of every story I submitted, where, when, when I heard back, and when/if it was published.  I also had a Publication List, that listed in order each of my published stories, but I only counted the first time they were published.  This list also had a one sentence outline for each story to make it easier for me to find them since I’ll remember that I wrote a story about X, but can’t remember what title I gave for it.  Nice and straight forward, except my numbers didn’t match, and there were other things I wanted to keep track of.  After putting off making a new list for years, I finally decided to do it, and part of the reason for that post was to make myself do it.  Well, I didn’t expect to finish this new list so soon, but I’ve had some internet issues, so instead of spending hours watching YouTube videos, I worked on these new lists.

Anyway, while working on the new lists, I realized that I actually had a third list of my stories.  On my website I like to have a little blurb about my stories and a link to them if they are online.  Turns out, between the three lists, I had just about every mistake option.  There were stories on my Submission List that weren’t on my Publication List and vice versa.  And I had stories on my lists that weren’t on my website, and even one story on my website, but not on either list.  (That’s an interesting tale, but for another day.) But after countless hours of work, I can say that my new Submission List, my new Publication List, and my website are all in agreement, more or less.  There are a couple stories missing from my website, but they were first posted on websites that no longer exist and have been posted elsewhere, or in one case is a story I don’t really like that is still up on a dying website.  And there could be some fundamental flaw in my lists, but to the best of my knowledge I’ve covered everything.

So what did I find out?  Well, as of the posting of this blog, “Old Story” is my 679th published story.  My most recent publication is a reposting of the story “Worst Foot Forward,” which marks my 243rd reposting of a story.  Now, some of these reposted stories have been reposted three, four, and I think in one case even five times as they made the circuit of dying websites.  I haven’t worked out exactly how many of my stories I’ve reposted, but if for some reason I ever wanted to, I could figure it out.  Part of the reason I got around to finally redoing these lists, is because I jokingly thought that the reason I was able to publish so many stories is because half of them were under 500 words.  Well, now I know that 429, or over 63% of my published stories are under 500 words.  The full numbers are, I have 39 stories of 100 words or less, 155 between 101-250 words, 235 between 251-500 words, 116 between 501-750 words, 57 between 751-1,000 words, 59 between 1,001-2,500 words, 12 between 2,501-5,000 words, 4 between 5,001-10,000 words, and two over 10,001 words.  If you’re curious, my shortest story at only 20 words is “Never Done,” which is on a dying website and some may find in poor taste.  My longest story is “Relics” at 15,794 words, which some may also find in poor taste.

The other things I’ve found out, is that 612 of my stories, or 90.1%, were published by me, while 30, or 4.4% were published on a friend’s website or by a writing group I was a part of.  The remaining 37 or 5.4% were published by someone else.  The total number of words in all my published stories (using the word length of the most recent reposting) is 428,857 words.  I also have been keeping track of how many words I write each day for the past twenty years, and that stands at just over 863,000.  Meaning there are over 434,000 words that I’ve either cut from stories or are in stories I’ve started but never finished.   

Stories weren’t the only things I kept lists on, since I also dabble a bit in poetry.  These are mostly haiku, but there are a few non-rhyming poems thrown in.  Again, I had a Submission List, Publication List, and my Website list, and even though I do far less poetry than stories, these were somehow even more out of whack.  I had haiku on my website that didn’t show up on either list, and haiku on at least one list but not on my website.  It felt like it took just as long for me to hammer it all into shape as it did my stories. 

My most recent new poetry publication, is the haiku “the rich get richer” which is my 132nd poem.  My most recent poem publication is the reposting of “Stealer of Daylight,” which is my 35th poem repost.  Of my published poems, 116, or 87.9% are haiku, while the other 16, or 12.1%, are non-rhyming.  I’ve published 129, or 97.7% of my poems, 1, or 0.8%, were published by a writing group I was in, and the other 2, or 1.5%, were published by someone else.

So that is the update on my story/poem lists.  But it’s not the end.  When I decided to write a quick outline for my published stories so I could find them easier, I also realized I should do that for my unpublished stories.  Sometimes I’ll remember that I started a story about X, but can’t remember how far I got with it.  So I have an Unpublished List, that has the title or working title, what type it likely is – be it a short story, or more like a novella which also indicates which folder I have it in – as well the brief outline.  I set all this up, and kept it updated for a while, but I haven’t done such a good job for the past year or so.  Which means my next project will be sorting all that out and getting it up to date.  Which will be annoying because I’ll be revisiting all these stories that held so much promise, but I never got around to finishing.  Joy.

Random Writing Tips – Keep track of inspirations

 

Last month, I gave the tip of Keep track of everything, in regards to the submission and publications of your stories.  I think that idea of keeping track of things stuck in my mind, and when I had a random memory of something, the two clicked together and I had a tip for this month.

Many years ago, on the Discovery Channel, or Science Channel, or some such channel, they would have these random specials.  They would ask something like, “What if an alien probe showed up at Earth?” and then they would construct a fictional story about this idea where they could sprinkle in some actual scientists to explain some specific idea.  I would watch these specials, but mostly for the science.  The fictional aspects of them I usually found … bland or stupid.  I think I just watched them to see what not to do in my own stories.

For example, there was one where a small black hole was heading towards Earth.  We figured out something was up because there came this huge wave of comets kicked out of the Oort Cloud, and we eventually figured out it had to be a black hole that would enter the solar system in like, fifty years.  Humanity rushes to build an ark for some 10,000 survivors or so to escape to another star system.  They do escape, just as the black hole eats a large chunk of the Earth.

I only roughly remember the plot for this – I believe a subplot is some billionaires didn’t want to risk being left behind in the lottery for the survivors, so they use their money to build an anti-matter drive ship which explodes on the launch pad – but to me it seemed every choice they made was the wrong one.  So for the next few weeks, I tried to work out the “better” way to deal with this random, very specific situation.  And then, like most things, I eventually set it aside and it just became a dim memory rarely remembered.  I could explain what I remember of my idea, but it basically boils down to instead of building one giant ark to escape to another solar system, they should have built hundreds or thousands of smaller ships and start sending them out to the outer parts of our solar system as soon as they were finished.  Then, after the black hole passed through, they could return to the inner solar system to either recolonize it, or to gather the resources to build the ark. 

Anyway, the reason I bring all this up, is that over the years I’ve tried to look up the original show to see how accurate my memory of it is.  But I can’t remember the title of it, what channel it aired on, or even what year it aired.  And even when Google gave you actual results, instead of pointless ads or AI slop, I couldn’t find it, so I have no idea how to find it now.  So my writing tip is, if you ever come across something that sparks an idea for you, maybe make a note of it.  Because there’s a chance twenty years later you’ll want to look it up for some reason, but won’t have any luck.

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Image from Pixabay.

Writing Newsletter First Quarter 2026

 

As I said in My writing plans for 2026, instead of trying to write a story each month for my website, I’d only do one each quarter.  The story for this quarter was “Keep Writing,” which I almost didn’t finish in time.  I started another story, but it turned out to be too big for me, so I had to set it aside and then scramble to come up with something else.  But I did manage to do it.

As I also said in my plans, I was only going to post one story each quarter on my blog, and I came up with a story, but then things happened so I had to delay posting it until the second quarter.  So I had a story for the second quarter, and I had to scramble to get one for the first quarter, which I did with “Still Relevant.”

I wanted to post a story on Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee, but I didn’t get to it.  I did start a story for Buy Me a Coffee, but in the scramble of the last few weeks of the quarter, as well as yard and garden work, and a collapsing society, I didn’t get to finish it.  But that just means I already have a story mostly done for the second quarter.

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It seems so easy a task to keep track of how many microfictions and haikus I post, but I keep forgetting to mark what I’ve done, and then I get confused trying to go back and recount them.  So moving forward, I’ll just say that I’ve posted some of each, and if you really want to know how many there were, you can count them yourself on my Untitled Works Page and my Haiku Page.

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And I think that’s it.  With everything going on in the world, trying to get my garden stuff ready for spring, and a few mild illnesses, I really haven’t had time to do much writing.  Will that change?  We’ll just have to wait and see.

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Image from Pixabay.