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.

Random Writing Tips – Keep track of everything

 

I’ve been submitting/self-publishing stories for just over twenty years.  I think at first, I just kept track of things in a notebook, but I eventually decided to make an Excel document to keep track of everything.  I had the story’s title, where I submitted it, when I submitted it, when I heard back, and what the result was.  Later, I started keeping track of the stories that were published.  I did this by numbering them in the order they were published, as well as turning their entry red.  The importance of the numbering is that sometimes I’d submit a story somewhere and not hear back for over a month, during which time I was posting stories each week on my website. 

This worked well for years, but then I had a problem.  I’ve published hundreds of stories on my webpage – most are only a few hundred words – and I don’t remember them all.  One time I remembered writing a story about, I don’t know, aliens landing at Mardi Gras, but I couldn’t remember what the title was.  So I scrolled through story after story, until I finally found … “Party Planet,” or whatever.  Knowing that something similar would eventually happen again, I decided it would be nice to have, not detailed descriptions of every story, but something like “Aliens land at Mardi Gras,” which I could quickly search for and find. 

The easy thing to do would be to just add this on to the existing list, but I figured it would be nice to have a list of just my published stories in the order they were published.  I got to work and soon had a list, and then I had to go to the story, refamiliarize myself with it, then write up a blurb.  And that should have been it.

Unfortunately, I made a mistake somewhere.  Well, a couple of mistakes.  Like, #500 on my Submissions List is #502 on my Publications List.  But, #400 is #399, and #300 is #301.  This isn’t a new problem.  I made my Publications List several years ago, so I’ve known of this mismatch.  Unfortunately, fixing this issue is #439 on my “It would be nice to do this someday list,” and I have a thousand things on my, “I should do list,” not to mention the thousand things on my, “To do list.”

A couple years ago, when I was getting close to publishing my 600th story, I figured I should go through and find my mistakes to know which story it was.  But life happened and I never did.  And now I’m inching closer to Number 700, and I figured I should really get to it, this time.  For sure.  Part of my forcing myself to do this, was to write this post about the importance of keeping track of your stories.  I could explain the issues I have, and then in a few months I can do an update about how I finally sat down and did the work and can finally say exactly how many stories I’d published.   

Well, I have starting redoing both lists.  I’m redoing both to make sure I don’t miss anything.  I’ve barely started, and I’ve already found a couple mistakes.  I have no idea how long this project will take, because I’m also doing something else.  In an early draft of this post, I mentioned that I had published over 600 stories, and while that sounds impressive, probably half of them are under 500 words.  And then I realized it would be nice to know how many of stories are under 500 words, or over 5,000 or whatever category I want to put them in.  So now I’m redoing both lists, and then also hunting down the stories and seeing how long they are.  This is a project I’ll slowly be working on for months.  Will I finish it before #700?  Only time will tell. 

So if you’re a beginning writer, I’d say start keeping track of everything you can, because someday you’ll wish you had.  And going back to do it all later can be super annoying.

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Image from Pixabay.

Writing in these dark times

I’m trying to write more microfiction stories.  For one, I can post them on Mastodon or Bluesky making them a nice way for people to find out about me (here is a page with all the ones I’ve published) and two, I’m slowly working on a collection of 1,001 microfiction stories, and it takes some time to write that many.  Last week I came up with an idea dealing with the current state of the world, when I ran into a wall, and I haven’t quite figured out how to move on.

The idea for the story is pretty simple.  Some guy is at home on the couch when someone bangs on the door – instead of using the doorbell – and shouts, “ICE, open up.” The guy gets up, starts recording on his phone, and opens the inner door.  Outside the screen door is some masked asshole in camo, but before he could say anything, the owner says, “Fuck off.  I don’t want any of your Fascist Scout Cookies.” He then slams the door as hard as he could.

I came up with the idea, and hoped it would bring a smile to someone’s face.  And then I ran into the reality wall.  Because, as a white guy from Pennsylvania, I – possibly – could get away saying something like that to the Istapo.  But Juanita from Puerto Rico?  She’d probably be pulled through the screen door, or maybe just shot. 

I live in the middle of nowhere, in a very red part of Pennsylvania.  So there’s little chance I’ll have a run in with ICE.  And I’m broke, so I can’t really support financially those that are standing up to these goons.  For the longest time, I thought my role would be writing stories making fun of the fascist assholes, or stories set in a better world that we could aspire towards.  That’s great and all, but it really feels like it’s not enough.  Or worse, what if the next ICE execution video we see is someone saying, “I don’t want any of your Fascist Scout Cookies,” before slamming the door as the goon goes into hyper-rage.  That would destroy me. 

And that’s where I am right now.  I want to write to help the cause, but I don’t know what I can write that could help.  And my normal stories of aliens and time travel just feel, at best, pointless and at worst, a distraction. 

My writing plans for 2026

In 2025, my basic writing plan was to post a story each month on my website, one each month on one of my blogs, and one each quarter on my Ko-fi page.  That works out to seven stories every three months.  Not all of these stories were new, but still it turned out to be a lot.  I ended up missing a few months from general writing burnout, as well as stress from my personal life as well as the general collapse of society.  So for 2026, I’m going to make a bit of a change.  The first is I’m stopping doing a story each month on my website, and instead will only do one each quarter.  I’ll also only do a story each quarter on one of my blogs as well as on Ko-fi.  I’m also planning on trying to do a story each quarter on my Buy Me A Coffee page.  I set this up years ago, but never did anything with it.  But on the off chance I might make a few bucks off it, I figured I’d try it out.  So instead of working on seven stories each three months, I’ll only have to do four.  Hopefully, this will lead to better quality as well as less stress.  As well as more time for me to work on other projects.

One of my goals for 2025 was to finish up my Lunar Dreams project, which is essays on how we could colonize the moon.  I, unfortunately, didn’t get much done with this.  Besides all the drama of a collapsing society, there was also the point that I originally planned to release it on Amazon.  But in the last few years, it seems fewer people are buying books from Amazon.  I understand that, but it also sucks because that’s were all my books are.  I need to diversify, and I have checked out Draft2Digital, but I’d like to test the waters a bit before launching a big project there.  So my plan for 2026 is to self-publish two stories on Draft2Digital and see how they go before deciding if I want to do Lunar Dreams there.  These two stories I wrote years ago, but there are some clunky bits I need to hammer out before I post them. 

Those are my plans for 2026.  Hopefully, by the end of the year we’ll have stopped our slide into darkness.  I don’t want my plans for 2027 to just be to survive.

Writing Newsletter Fourth Quarter 2025

 

This quarter, I wrote “Same War, Different Tactics” and “The Next Problem” as part of my Monthly Stories.  Again, there were only two stories because I was burned out.  So next year I’m doing something different, which I’ll discuss more when I put up my 2026 Writing Plans post sometime in early January.  My Ko-fi post for this quarter was my story “Sign of the Times.” And on one of my blogs, I posted the stories “A Collapse We Can Dance To” and “The Santa Shakes.”

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If I counted correctly, this quarter I posted two new microfiction stories while also reposting two.  I also posted six new haikus and reposted two more.  The microfictions can be found on my Untitled Works Page, and the haikus on my Haiku Page. 

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Last quarter, I wrote about hopefully polishing up a story to post on Draft2Digital, but that didn’t happen.  That’s now part of my 2026 plans, which, as I said, I’ll be discussing in a future post.

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Like most people, my 2025 plans were ruined by a handful of assholes.  Hopefully, 2026 will be the year we ruin their plans.

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Image from Pixabay.

A Stranger Things prediction

My plan had been to wait until early December then start my Stranger Things rewatch doing an episode or two each day so that I would get to the final episode just as it came out.  But I ended up starting early because I wasn’t feeling well and just needed to watch something.  I believe I was watching the end of Season 2 when the first part of Season 5 came out.  Since then, I’ve caught all up and watched some reactions to Season 5 as well as some theory videos.  While some of the theory videos I’ve seen have gotten close, I haven’t seen anyone actually predict this.

First off, at some point during my rewatch of Season 3, I wondered how the show would end and where would the characters end up.  And I had the idea of there being a bit of a time jump and we’d see what the characters were doing in a few years.  For example, we’d see Will going to college.  He meets his roommate, who is impressed with Will’s art or something, and then, somehow, we figure out the roommate is gay, and we’d be left with the idea that Will may have finally found someone. 

But after watching the first part of Season 5, I’m pretty sure Will is going to die.  Because I think either El or Will have to die for the show to show that it’s serious.  I think they are the only ones that could do that.  Killing anyone else – Steve, Joyce, even Mike – I feel would just be killing a character just to kill a character.  Like, Steve dying would wreck Dustin, but I don’t really see that as a big enough series changing event.

The reason I think it’s going to be Will, is I’m not sure Will is gay.  I think it’s possible Will only loves Mike.  Possibly not even in a sexual way.  I don’t want to try to label what Will is, because I’m sure Will doesn’t fully understand it, and it’s possible he could have met someone later in life that he could have developed similar feelings for.  But what I think will happen is Will will basically take a bullet for El, not so much to save her, but to save Mike the heartache of losing her.  I think that something that Capital T Tragic is the right amount of bitterness the show needs for a proper ending.  It ticks the box of a major character dying to show things are serious, and it’s a death that will affect a lot of people in different ways.  It will hurt Joyce and Jonathan the most, but then Hopper has a more or less stepchild’s death to deal with, Mike and El will have to deal with what he did for them, and Robin will have lost a burgeoning friend.  And if his death is somehow witnessed by the kids of Hawkins, they’ll have to deal with how they bullied this kid who still went on to save them.

Or, a better/worse than death way to do it, is they discover that to truly end everything, someone needs to seal the worlds off from one another.  And it can only be done from the Upside Down and whoever does it isn’t coming back.  El is going to do it, but while she and Mike share what they think will be their last embrace, Will rushes past and start closing it.  Possibly even singing, “Should I stay or should I go now?  If I go there will be trouble, And if I stay it will be double.”

Or maybe everyone dies.  I guess we’ll know in a few weeks.

My best story?

Many years ago, I had an idea and hammered out a story of maybe 200 words.  I don’t remember exactly how I felt about it at the time, but I’m sure I thought it was a very good little story.  I think part of why I wrote it was I needed more stories for my first collection, A Man of Few Words, and it was a perfect one to include.  In the years since then, I’ll occasionally dig it out and reread it, and at some point, I started thinking of it as my best story.  I’ve written longer stories, and stories with more meat to them, but this one has like the most impact per word. 

For years, I’ve taken some pride in it; it is my best story after all.  But lately, I’ve started to wonder: did I already peak with my writing?  I like to think that my writing has gotten better over the years, but then why hasn’t a new best story appeared?  Or is it just my best flash fiction story, and I should try to figure out what my best short story is and when I wrote it?  Or should I stop worrying about such things and just write? 

Writing Newsletter Third Quarter 2025

 

This quarter, I wrote “Too Stupid” and “Sacrifices Must Be Made” as part of my Monthly Stories.  The reason there’s only two stories, is I didn’t post one in September.  I started two or three stories, but didn’t finish any because of burnout, and probably a few other reasons.  But the most recent story I started – which still doesn’t have a title – I’m 99.9% certain I’ll finish it up and post it as my October story.  My Ko-fi post for this quarter was my story “Perchance to Dream.” On one of my blogs, I posted the stories “Bated Breath” and “The Fall,” as well as reposted the story “Star-Spangled Ploy.” I also posted the poem “Nighttime Vision” on my Mastodon profile.

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If I counted correctly, this quarter I posted one new microfiction as well as reposted one.  I also posted two new haiku, and reposted three.  The microfictions can be found on my Untitled Works Page, and the haikus on my Haiku Page.  The low numbers are a result of general writing burnout, as well as 114 other projects in the garden and around the house.  Not to mention all the videos, and shows, and videos about the shows that somebody has to watch.

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I’ve been meaning to polish up a story and post it on Draft2Digital, but hopefully things will slow down enough in this next quarter that I’ll finally get around to it.

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Image from Pixabay.

An idea for a story anthology for people more organized than I

A month or so ago, I was at work hating my job, when the phrase “A world not ruled by money,” came to mind.  I started thinking about it, but had to stop because I was depressing myself.  But I had the great idea of an anthology of stories based on the prompt of “A world not ruled by money.” That is a great idea, but for somebody else to do it.  I don’t have the patience, organizational skills, or money to do such a thing.  (While the stories would be about a world not ruled by money, we unfortunately live in one that is, so selected stories should get something, even if it’s just $10.) So if you are a person who could put something like that together, please do.  And then let me know so I might submit a story.

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To show why I was getting depressed, here was what I was thinking.  I was just getting an idea for the world, I hadn’t figured out a story for it, yet.  I’m not worried about someone stealing this idea, because one possibility would be to have all the stories set in the same world, and this could be it.

So in this world, everyone gets, say 1000 Credits each month.  Someone could have a modest one-bedroom apartment with water, electricity, and internet, all the healthy food they’d want without any worry of going hungry, no worry about any medications they need, and they could take classes – online or at a university – either for a degree or just out of interest, and once a week they could hang out with friends at a bar, or a game, as well as have a date night of dinner and a movie, all for, say 900 Credits a month.  And with what they save up they could go on a vacation or two each year.  Basically, you could live a healthy happy life without much trouble.

Now if you wanted a car, or a house, or more vacations, you’d have to get a job.  In this world a lot of the manufacturing jobs would be done by machines, so humans would be left to the more human jobs.  Skilled jobs – doctors, teachers, etc. – you’d have some set schedule, but a full-time job would only be like 15-20 hours a week.  For “unskilled” jobs – wait staff, janitors, etc. – it might be the company would have a list of workers and they would call them up and ask, “Can you work five hours on Thursday?” Some people might stick to one company, but I can also see people working at a different place each week.   

The beginning idea for the story I had, was a “Day in the Life of” type.  Character wakes up, not with an alarm but they just wake up, and they have breakfast.  Then they get on a subway to go into town.  Their phone has a cracked screen, so they stop at the phone store to have it replaced, and maybe they put in a new battery since it’s a couple years old.  Because if the phone companies weren’t so motivated for you to buy a whole new phone, they’d be easy to repair.  And maybe they get a call to see if they could come in to work in a store because someone is sick, and they go in and it’s a pleasant experience. 

This is where things started to depressing for me, because there are so many weird things the store I work in does in the name of capitalism.  Like, we have different sized drinks, but the bottles twice as large cost half as much because they’re not cold.  People want a cold drink, so they’ll buy the more expensive version because it’s “convenient.” And I don’t know how much of my time is spent just dealing with putting up and taking down sales.  The point of sales is take the $5 item that you don’t really need and would normally walk past and make it 2 for $9 and you think, “That’s a deal!” so you get two of these things that probably only cost $0.50 to make.  Shit like that wouldn’t happen in a world not ruled by money. 

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So that’s the interesting idea I had.  But unless somebody puts together such an anthology, I can’t afford to put time and effort into it.