I set myself a goal this summer: Write 2-3 pages each day. I did this in part because I have one friend who's gotten into creative writing as a hobby and he's been asking for advice. I have classmate from high school who is now a published author. I was beginning to feel a little left behind.
So far, so good. It's helped me immensely to plow through the opening chapters of PbN 1999. I'm also still posting Star Swords material on my other story page.
Thought #2
And speaking of Star Swords and other throwbacks to my past writings, I made the decision to incorporate some of my old WAS characters into PbN 1999. WAS was a near future sci-fi/political thriller role-playing game that I made in high school. It was basically James Bond's universe with giant world-spanning conspiracies, megalomaniacal super-villains, and cool gadgets, with suave super spies and assassins as the heroes. I wrote a series of mini-novels centered on some of the characters (some of my very first forays into creative writing).
About 15 years ago, I gave some thought to reviving the franchise. I made some notes on a possible revamp of the universe, taking out some of the more fantastical elements, changing character names and backgrounds, and coming up with a few brief plot ideas. What emerged would have been a pretty cool set of stories, but I got distracted as I often do and that material has laid fallow ever since.
Enter Hunter: The Vigil. When I started doing background work for the Reign of Terror in Act Four of VbN, I started reading a lot of HtV sourcebooks. There I was introduced to Task Force Valkyrie, the government agency tasked with dealing with supernatural threats. I started using them as minions for the frighteningly well-connected Damian Drake. Now, in PbN 1999, they're going have a larger role.
But I ran into a problem. Michael's author alias is "Alex McCoid," which is the name of the protagonist in the WAS stories. I wasn't using the name for anything so I simply stole it. Now I'm debating whether to keep that as Michael's pen name or swap it for something else so I can introduce the "real" Alex McCoid as a TFV agent.
*Sigh*
This is what happens when I don't think things through.
Thought #3
Made a quick stop at IMDB today. The little front page trivia bit was about True Blood.
"Each episode title is also the title of a song from popular or Christian music."
Fuck! Here I was thinking I was doing something unique with the chapter titles of my story.
Thought #4
I've been wavering again on the lolicon aspect to Sarah's character. Only this time, I wavering towards making her look more juvenile rather less.
I've always been torn about this particular issue. There are very few things in our society more taboo than pedophilia, so I've been questioning how much I want to court the controversy here. Of course, Sarah is not actually a child. By the end of VbN she would be very nearly 30, but looks somewhere around 12 because of when she was embraced as a vampire.
But I've got a particular plot point in some upcoming chapters that really only works if Sarah truly looks her age at the onset. She has to look 12 or the changes that she's about to undergo won't have the impact that they're supposed to, on either the characters in the story or you as the readers.
So I'm shifting her appearance younger again and taking my chances with the "Eww! Gross!" reaction people will likely have when she and Michael get busy.
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