A Novel Idea

I’ve been told two or three times in the past week that I have too much time on my hands, which… actually, you know, that kinda hurts. I’ve always considered everything I do to be of the upmost importance and significance, whether it be drawing stick figure comics, playing video games, watching cartoons…

Shoot, sounds like the critics are right.

NO LONGER! It’s time to start doing something meaningful with my life. To that end, I’ve begun actually working on one of the many book ideas that have come to me over the years and years that I’ve thought about being a writer.

The record will show that I’m not the biggest fan of fantasy literature. True, I read quite a bit of it in high school, but anything that reminds me of high school deserves to get punched in the face, whether it has a face or not. Besides, most fantasy books are highly derivative. In fact, author David Eddings created a formula for the fantasy novel:

Unlikely Hero + Wise Old Man + Evil Overlord + Magical Object = $$$

Well, the formula worked for Eddings. He used it to great effect in his five-book epic The Belgariad, and then again when he repackaged the EXACT SAME STORY in another five books as The Malloreon. What a con!

So I’m honestly a little surprised that the first book I hope to write is actually a fairy tale (ie: fantasy). My hope is that I’ll be able to tell a story distinct from other fantasy stories by limiting the scope and significance of the events. So I’ll be telling what I hope is a human story that just so happens to have shape-changing animals in it. Besides, if the whole thing takes place in a simple village, we won’t have to travel to New Zealand when the movie gets made.

The story I hope to tell starts as all good stories by Samuel Taylor Coleridge do – with a crazy freakin’ dream. In my dream, I was in an African forest, where I saw a small housecat. I turned away from the cat for just a second and, when I turned back, the cat had turned into a little girl. Y’know, the way things just tend to happen in dreams. For reasons that made perfect sense in my head, I decided to take the girl with me to New York and started raising her as my daughter. We walked the streets and made fun of drunks together for just a few minutes before I woke up.

And, you know, I actually found that I missed the weird little cat-girl thing.

In most cases, the idea of having a meaningful emotional relationship with another human being is enough to make me want to set small animals on fire. However, in this case, the novelty of the situation prompted me to make the girl from my dreams a character in a story – as a way to keep her around, I guess.

So I’ve written already a synopsis of what the whole plot will look like, but I’m just now starting to write the actual first chapter. From there, I’ll probably write the last chapter, then a chapter or two in the middle, before I finally lose interest.

That’s why I generally write poetry. Keeps my attention before something else can come along to… That man has a Butterfinger! Get him!