http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire#Folk_beliefs

I’m waiting for the day one of them corrects my grammar or spelling. Or tells me they don’t like where I’m taking the plot or their favorite character.

A tumor of a story has been worming its way through my guts the past few months. It’s a romp set in an alternate 1917. A serial globetrotter. Post-steampunk secret societies and government agencies. High adventure and deadly mystery. Proto-noir psychedelic combat.

So I had a problem. Where to start? I have ideas and characters and the basis for a world. And that was part of the problem. I started doing research into the history of the time and places to try and create my alternate world. What I found out was that nothing ever has a start. It’s just a long series of cause and effect. There’s madness there and if I didn’t stop I’d be back to year zero. So rather than get mired in research and backstory I figured I needed to get writing and writing fast. It’s a serial, so write it like a serial – a ton of short stories.

I decided that I needed a starting point. This morning I came up with it. Something completely off the wall. A reason for the story being. I wrote out a forward on the bus, and then spent the evening at Jersey’s in shoreline eating and drinking beer and getting the first scene done. 2400 words later. I’m not happy with it all yet but it’s a start.

I’ve got a business model I’m looking into for releasing this. It’s a serial, so we’ll see how this works out. I might try getting it into a periodical. We’ll see.

Write a scene about a struggle. It could be a fight, or someone trying to put on a pair of pants. I’m interested in seeing sense of surroundings, the geography that describes where everything is in a consistent manner.

Anyway, you’ll need to click through in order to read, due to length and also probably a good idea to block content from the front page.

“You motherfucker! You try to rip me off?”

I couldn’t think but I knew where my knee was and then Simon did too. He grunted and loosened his grip and I pressed my free hand against his chest and he rolled off. I scrambled across the floor and against something hard. I tried to stand up but my head connected with the underside of the table. It hurt.

“Shit!”

Simon was rolling back onto his knees and breathing heavy and a line of drool trailed from his lips to the dirty floor of the bar.

“What’s going on out there?”

The voice was from the kitchen. It was Paulie on tonight, he’d done me up a broasted chicken tit and some potato wedges and he could kill me with those hams he called fists. The pistol. I had to get the fucking pistol out. My hand was still wrapped around the grip and it was off the grid as far as my brain was concerned just pulling the damn thing like eventually it’d pop out of my pocket. I had to will it to stop. Simon’s grubby paws were under the table and onto my lapels and I was out and back under the low lights.

“Wait, Simon, I can explain.”

His right came in fast and straight and then it exploded and my neck bent back at some odd angle I wasn’t aware was possible. Somehow the whole damn thing didn’t snap and I was looking at that ugly fucker again. He pulled back for another blow. I couldn’t stand it. I pushed into him and knocked him off balance and he fell back into the bar dragging me with him. I grabbed his own shirt and ripped it to hold him steady and brought my head down as hard as I could on the bridge of his nose. There was blood. I did it again and hit his mouth. I was sure there was a tooth lodged in my forehead.

“You okay, Simon?”

Paulie didn’t like coming out of the kitchen if he couldn’t help it.

“Spluh!” said Simon.

I tried to wrench my jacket free from Simon’s grip. Some dumb retard bartender strength kept him holding on. I slipped one arm out and turned and held onto the other end like we were dancing. The pistol. Still in the pocket.

“Spluh!”

I reached for it and couldn’t find the opening of the pocket. Simon grabbed behind him and found the fountain gun and sprayed well vodka in my face. It stung like fire. I closed my eyes and felt and found the slit and reached inside. The pistol was loose and it came out like nothing had happened before and I pointed it in Simon’s face.

“Give me my keys.”

“Spluh!”

There was a motion back behind the bar and I ducked but I didn’t have to. Paulie misjudged the shot. The pot with the boiling oil hit Simon in the back. Burning fat rained down all around me. Simon was screaming and spinning, almost breaking his arms trying to get the shit off him. It smelled like broasted chicken. I almost lost it.

“Paulie, what the fuck?”

He just stood in the door staring at what he’d done. Simon was all over the place. He hit the floor and rolled but that only spread it around. He left melted bits of himself all over the sticky wood. He was back on his feet and heading for the door.

“Don’t let him get out!”

I looked at Paulie still motionless in the door to the kitchen and then back at Simon who was busy pushing on the door when it only opened in. I didn’t want to touch him. I didn’t even want to go near him. I looked down at the pistol in my hand.

“Oh fuck.”

• Chores. Yes, I did chores.
• Played with Oscar. So much playing. It was great. I need to add pictures to his site.
• Finished Pratchett’s latest Discworld book, Making Money. It was great. I like the Moist Von Lipwig character, it’s adding dimension to Lord Vetinari, and since so many of the books have followed Commander Sam Vimes’ adventures it’s nice to see him from a different perspective. Side Note: Pratchett’s storybook “Where’s my Cow?” featuring the City Watch cast is one of Oscar’s favorite books. (Side Note 2: looks like there’s another Discworld book out, with another soon to be released. Even diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Pratchett continues to crank them out.)
• Developed a multi-site single sign-on system in Rails. It allows a site using an API_CODE to register a user, which returns a token that can be used by another site to verify that the visitor is logged in and spawn a new session. The API allows a chunk of anonymous data to be registered along with the user to be passed along to the second site. Really, it’s a simple application with two RESTful web services. I’m pretty proud of it.
• Discovered that the infused vodka we made last Fall mixes a little too well with cranberry juice.
• Started playing back through God of War again, which is great fun and I wish I’d finished it back on the PS2 when I first got it years ago.
• Purchased and currently enjoying the new Fear Factory album. I’ll write a review once I have it fully consumed. So far? Happiness.

Things I didn’t do that I wanted to:

• While I moved the File Server out of the office into the living room and made a place for it, I didn’t plug it in and get it up and running again. This is annoying, I want access to my music library again.
• I wanted to clean Oscar’s room today. Oh well.
• I wanted to get a new DVD started for the Grandparents in PA.
• I wanted to get started on the two short story ideas I’ve had going through my head the past week. I also wanted to get some edits into Down the Path while they were still fresh in my head from last Thursday’s North Sea Writers meeting.

We also went shopping last night (Oscar played with a Nerf battle axe and talked me into buying a SpongeBob SquarePants DVD set), and we also went to Matt’s for dinner today and Oscar went silly playing with Callie, Matt’s Welsh Pembroke Corgi. Tomorrow Dena is bringing the kids downtown since they all have the day off and we’ll be meeting for coffee.

Exhausting.