Meanwhile…

The hero of my story “Shades of Red” (which should be available in the next month or so over at A Thousand Faces, stay tuned for more details!) was the Scarlet Ranger. She’s super strong, nigh invulnerable, kicks ass with the best of them (what am I saying, she is the best of them), and is the most beloved superhero of her city. She’s flirty, can cuss any damn boy under the table, and looks really hot wearing your sports jersey the morning after. She’s pretty much become my Buffy. In “Shades” she’s the veteran superhero who has to bail everyone else out of trouble when the fit hits the shan.

Originally, she was pretty much just a cardboard cutout, however. She was there to get killed in the first five pages. The rest of the story would be about the two-bit loser villain who inadvertently managed to kill her and how he deals with it. There was a whole thing. That story, however, morphed into what became “Shades of Red,” in which the Ranger takes the central role. Even while I was writing “Shades,” I had a lot of trouble getting a handle on her personality, up until the very end, when certain events I won’t give away happen and her reaction is just priceless. After writing that moment in the story, I had to go back and rewrite much of the earlier dialogue and interactions, because I finally had a handle on her.

Well, it’s been far too long since I’ve dipped into the Scarlet Ranger well, so I thought I’d take a little gander into her secret origin… (almost 1500 words!) Bloody hell, I’m enjoying this. Maybe I’ll make this my supernatural story.

(It’s Nee-kay, by the way, not like the shoe.)

Edit: I just realized the small television in the story is probably anachronistic. I don’t know. Were there TVs small enough for that in the ’70s?

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So I’ve started shopping for a laptop (though I hear the kids today call them notebooks? whatever). Any writer will tell you sometimes you just have to get out of the house to write, and a laptop would make it so much easier for that. Also, for any road trips, writing group write-ins, etc. At the moment I carry my current projects around on a USB thumb drive, but even then I can only actually work on my work and home desktops. If I’m out somewhere, everything has to be done on pen and paper. I’ve never been interested in owning one before, but it’s becoming a necessity as I get more serious about writing.

There are plenty of laptops available in my small budget range, but unfortunately they all have Vista on them. Which pretty much makes me not want to get one at all. I wouldn’t mind a Mac, but they’re too expensive and aren’t compatible with anything else I already own. There are a few available online with XP, but then I have fewer financial options (can’t really drop that much money all at once). Sigh. Facing a crappy OS pretty much takes all the fun out of it.

In other news, Dave Stevens has died. He’s the artist that created The Rocketeer and pretty much single-handedly jump-started the whole Bettie Page pop-culture craze that cropped up a while back. He was only 52. Darned shame.

I’ve started doing a little revising of my Secret Santa story I wrote last year for the writing group’s supernatural collection. I’m itching from a lack of writing, so I’ll try to get an exercise or two done in the next couple days.

Work is progressing on my robot noir, but very slowly. I have a lot of scenes planned out in my head, but I need to get to them first. I have the crime and all the various factions sorted out, and our good detective, Everett Lehrer, has gotten his first few clues and just discovered Asta. It’s at just over a thousand words.

I think I may continue taking my time on this one, and submit my story about arch-mage and Sevastian Dušan as my supernatural story for the writing group. I’ll make a few minor revisions and then get feedback. It’s one I wouldn’t mind submitting somewhere, but I honestly have no clue where it would go. Surely there are some markets out there for this sort of urban fantasy, I just need to find them.

Because there’s no way I’ll get this Asta story done by…I think it’s the 18th of this month that something is due to the group for crit, and it’s nowhere near the state it needs to be in.

How awesome was the season finale of the Sarah Connor Chronicles? Some of the best TV I’ve seen in years. The battle (if you could call it that) with the SWAT team and John’s uncle taking him to the park were both fantastic scenes. The series has really been improving. See what happens when you give a series more than three episodes, FOX? And then actually promote it?

Anyway, I’m coordinating the prompt contest for the writing group this month. I send out a group of prompts, and members write stories or scenes based on them (500-word minimum). Whoever gets the most by the end of the month wins. I thought I’d post them here for fun. I came up with them all myself. If anyone out there wants to write any of these, feel free!

1. Pick a song and use the title of the song as the title of your story. Somewhere in the story use a line or phrase from the song (as dialogue, in a description, as a person’s name, however you want).
2. Write a story in which a normally law-abiding person commits a crime.
3. Write a story in which the narrator’s roommate/spouse/tenant is a criminal (or leads some other secret, shadowy life), but the narrator doesn’t know.
4. Write a story in which a character is advised either, “Bald people aren’t just funny looking, they’re also aerodynamic.” or “Guilt won’t kill a man, but it will make him sweat a lot.”
5. Write a story including the following words (feel free to change the form or make them plural or whatever): dentist, rushed, supplying, whistles, damaged, angry, bicycle, nervous, nuclear, pillar
6. Write a story in which a salesperson is trying to sell something supernatural/otherworldly/high tech/just really bizarre (adorable furry thing, cursed monkey hand, death ray, pretzel shaped like Gooloo the Mighty, whatever).
7. Write a story that uses at least 3 of the following: a guitar, a time bomb, a badge, a movie camera, a fire extinguisher.
8. Write a story featuring only two characters, neither of whom speak the same language.

I have a few more I’ll be sending out each week to supplement these. I’m looking forward to reading some of the results.