-
AuthorSearch Results
-
July 11, 2016 at 7:15 am #4106
In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
“Look,” Ricardo pointed out to Bossy, “Seems you’re worrying too much, I just got a SMS from Connie, they’re all fine.”
“Glad they’re putting the newspaper subsides to good use…” snickered Bossy, thinking about the rather large phone bills Hilda used to put on her expenses. She could only wish that Connie would be more reasonable with overseas phone calls. “Anyway,” Bossy sighed “what is it exactly that she managed to say in less than 160 characters?”
Ricardo fumbled over his phone’s message history “She, she just replied… hang on, here:”
We're fine. Sophie is her usual weird, and we are following a lead to a nearby clinic. PS: Food's horrid, and the latest fashion is from the 60s.
“You stupid boy!” Bossy jumped out of her chair. “Don’t you see she’s sending you a clue. Not is all fine. There’s only one explanation for that 60s fashion resurgence, and you better hope it doesn’t smell like coconut!”
July 6, 2016 at 10:05 am #4104In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
“Is that lamb head on the menu?” asked Connie with a grimace on her face. “I can’t believe it.”
“It looks like it, dear”, retorted Sophie offhandedly. “Don’t look at me like that, I’ve seen and eaten worse.”
“Ewh”, said Connie, “I don’t want to know.” She was not quite honest, her reporter blood was thirsty about good and juicy stories. But she was not here to interview the temp, and the menu was leaving her perplexed. “What’s Hrútspungar ?”
“You don’t want to know”, said Sophie, “Trust me.”
Connie craved some vegan food and they didn’t seem to have any vegetables in the hotel restaurant. She pouted and finally gave up. “Take whatever you want, I’ll follow.”
“You like to live dangerously”, said Sophie.
“Whatever”, retorted Connie with a sigh. She put a hand on her round belly. “It may be an opportunity to begin that diet.”Sophie snorted. She never believed in diet. She had tried them all, just for fun, but she eventually found the rules boring and just forgot about the whole diet business.
“Nice beehive hair Ladies”, said the waiter with an appreciative look at their heads. “What will you order?” he asked opening his small notebook.
Sophie smiled at the compliment and closed the menu. “I’ve been told you had a special”, she said.
The man tilted his head and looked at the old woman with a hint of surprise in his eyes. He shrugged as if it wasn’t his problem after all. Connie gulped, expecting the worse.
“Two Svið with Gellur”, he said scribbling something in his notebook. “May I suggest some Brennivín?”
“You may”, answered Sophie. “It can help us gulp the whole thingy”, she explained to Connie.“The common error is to go for the head and dismiss the eyes”, said the waiter. “They may surprise you”, he added before leaving.
Connie looked murderously at Sweet Sophie, whom she would have renamed Sour Sophie in that moment. The old woman had an air of satisfaction on her face. “Why on earth would you pick that ?” asked the reporter.
“Oh! That was part of the instructions in the letter”, answered Sophie with a shrug that made her beehive tremble.
July 6, 2016 at 7:56 am #4102In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
“You!”, said Jeremy Duncan Jasper before jumping on the woman. “You stole my cat! What have you done to Max ?”
“I don’t have your cat”, said Funley loudly. She was trying to protect her face as an instinctive reaction and pushed on the ground with her feet. The chair had little wheels which allowed her to escape the man’s grasp, but it bumped on Ed’s desk. She was cornered. She jumped out of the chair and ran behind Ed’s desk followed closely by an angry Jeremy.“I assume you already know each others”, said Ed, tugging at his mustache casually.
“Of course I know her”, said Jeremy in a short breath. He showed his fist angrily. “She was supposedly from the hygiene inspection bureau when I worked at the veterinarian clinic. She stole my cat!”
“I don’t have your cat”, repeated Funley.
“What have you done with him old crone ? You gave me all those papers to read and sign and when I came back you were gone… with Max.”
“Tsk tsk”, said Ed. “We have more important matters to attend to.” He lifted his hand to prevent any objection. “You may or may not have noticed, but I have and that’s the more important. Reality has been rebooting repeatedly, and each time people… or animals”, he said looking at Jeremy, “are disappearing.”
“You see”, said Funley, “I don’t have your cat.” Jasper snorted and showed his teeth.
“We need to do something”, concluded Ed.
“Excuse me”, said Duncan, “but what does that have to do with us ? I’m just a bank employee.”
“A bank employee, who was a veterinarian, a plumber, a taxi driver, a tech guy at the phone company… and more importantly a map dancer. I need a team of gifted people to maximize our chances of survival.”
Funley raised an eyebrow. “Mr Steam, à propos”, she said brandishing the paper she had found in the trash can.
July 6, 2016 at 5:23 am #4099In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
Funley sniffed loudly as she unhurriedly emptied the trash can in Ed Steam’s office, pausing to read any interesting correspondence which may have wound up there. Looking over towards Ed and finding that his attention was still fixed on the computer monitor, she followed her sniff up with a small snort and then a throat clearing noise. When her sniffs and snorts didn’t capture Ed’s attention, she proceeded to blow her nose explosively.
This did the trick. Ed jumped and looked at Funley in alarm.
“Whatever is the matter, Funley? Are you ill?”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to disturb you,” apologised Finnley, pulling up a chair in front of Ed’s desk and seating herself comfortably on it.
“Actually, if you are not too busy, there is a small problem I’ve been wanting to speak with you about. I promised I would untangle the threads for you however the entanglement situation is worse than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams. Or nightmares for that matter. I don’t know who has been doing the record keeping — although I would hazard a guess at Evangeline — but the cross referencing, where it exists, is appalling and … “
A tap on the door and the new employee, Duncan Minestrone, popped his head into the office. “You wanted to see me, Mr Steam?” he asked.
Funley glanced towards the door in exasperation at the interruption and then her expression changed to one of horror.
“Jasper Grok!” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”
July 6, 2016 at 2:31 am #4098In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
Someone had told him once : “Catastrophes are like meteor shower, they come in flocks.”
Jeremy looked with dread at the smoke coming out of his computer. He had been writing an important e-mail to his new boss at the bank and was about to click the send button when it happened. The tech had said there was a current surge affecting the whole building. Everyone was in deep shit at the moment, they had to close the building to angry customers, and someone in high place was certainly worrying about the intangible money the bank was manipulating daily.
Oh! and concerning all his data, considering the smoke coming out of the machine, it was certainly irremediably lost.Jeremy sighed. His last relocation a few hours ago had made him a 36 year old salesman in a not so well known bank. His ID said he was called Duncan Minestrone, but he couldn’t let go of his old identity and kept on thinking of himself as Jeremy. And he didn’t feel that old.
His memory of his former life, before the relocation, was fading away. He didn’t remember well what he was doing and what were his passions. The only thing he was sure is that they had confiscated his cat, Max, when they gave him his first identity and he had been on the look for him ever since.
It wasn’t easy, especially since every other day he was receiving a new identity in his mailbox. At first he had found it odd and not so easy : as soon as he got accustomed to a new persona, he would have to change again. He feared he would soon lose track of who he really was. And he wasn’t sure about what all this was about.
The phone hanging on the wall rang. It was one of those old public phones. Jeremy had thought it was only for decoration. The tech was looking at him.
“Are you going to pick up ?” he asked.
“Me ?”
“Of course! The phone is in your office, isn’t it ?”Jeremy hesitated but eventually got up from his desk. The phone was calling him, but he didn’t really want to take the call. What if it was more problems. They come in flocks.
It was one of those old ringing tone caused by a mechanical bell inside. The speaker was shaking furiously. Jeremy couldn’t help but notice the dust on the machine.“You’d better take the call”, said the tech.
Jeremy picked up the apparatus which a greasy feeling in his hand.
“At last! Duncan, in my office! Now!”
It was the voice of his new boss, Ed, and he didn’t seem very happy.July 6, 2016 at 1:18 am #4096In reply to: The Chronicles of the Flying Fish Inn
I don’t know exactly when it struck me first. The passage of time.
When you are young, it’s easy to miss it, some would say “you’re a child, you don’t know about such things”, and maybe they are right.In a few months, it will already be 2 years that we reopened the Inn. The results have been mixed, we haven’t gotten any richer, but it definitely helps pay the bills.
It definitely helped to pay for Aunt Idle’s rehab, after her nervous breakdown last March. Well, rehab is a big word. We got professional help from some friend of Mater, Jiemba, who knows someone who knows someone.
Of course, we had to package it nicely for Didle to take the bait. She would have none of that rehab thing of course. But she was sold at the first syllable of Banisteriopsis caapi vine and Psychotria viridis leaf, well aya for short.After that, seems she wanted to travel to Iceland. Got to figure how she gets all that fancy money. Mater says it’s her sugar daddy lovers. Not Mater’s, you silly. Dido’s.
Mater says that without any judgment, which is rare. She still calls her a tart and all sorts of nice things, but it’s like she’s proud that she made it in the world —or just that she slowed down on the gin bottle.Speaking of Mater, she hasn’t been so well. After she tried to grab some can of chicken broth from the shelves, she broke her hip bone. Of course she couldn’t stand staying at the hospital and got herself discharged as soon as her doctor looked the other way, but I can see she’s not completely healed. Finnly is doing her best with the circumstances, adding nursing to her housekeeping skills. And Bert’s been around to support with the inn maintenance.
Well my twin sisters are another story altogether. They’ll be moving out, they said, live in the big city. They had no intention of going to college anyway. Seems they are looking for a full-time blogger job. I’m betting they’ll be back soon enough. Nothing beats Finnly’s mince pice and charbroiled spicy huhu skewers.
It’s been a while I’ve seen Dev’. Always working at the gas station. Mater always says his lack of ambition will save him from trouble.
So yes, time has passed. It’s funny how nobody else seems to notice.
July 5, 2016 at 10:21 am #4094In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
Bea had finished taking notes for her last client’s reallocation.
Nowadays, she wouldn’t release the cackle at each and every time.
It was too time consuming to realign her wits after it shuffled reality, and it was actually more effective to do many changes at once.
That much she’d learned. It was like giving dog food to a pack. Much better to give all at once to the hungry dogs, rather than try to organise the melee.She was about to call for the next client, when the walls of her kitchen trembled.
The next minute, she was in a labyrinth, dark and comfortable, with a musky smell, and soft sounds of coconuts thumps on a beach faintly in the distance.
A looming silhouette was here in the dark.
“Hello Bea” it said “welcome to my hut, I am the techromancer.”
July 5, 2016 at 10:14 am #4093In reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
It didn’t take too long to Ed Steam to find her. By his count, only a few hundred reality reboots.
It could have been more, but keeping a steady count of all the trigger-cackles was tricky.
He never was quite the same person each time. Hopefully, he’d noticed after the 57th reboot that something new had happened — since that particular reboot, it had seemed easier to keep track of his identity from reboot to reboot.As if Zero-point Bea had realized something, and honed her entangling capabilities.
Ed had tracked her at the border. Funnily, nowadays she was more or less the only unchanging thing in the whole universe.
She had rented a small apartment near the border, and was offering reallocation services on an ad-hoc basis.There were still many characters refugees who were looking for a story placement, and that’s what she provided them.
Ed was there for one thing: termitate her. His reality now was quite different from the one he originated, but despite all the changes, he was still in charge of preventing the surges wherever they happened.
It was a moral dilemma. Already so many persons had been displaced by the cackling surges and Bea’s uncontrolled shifting realities. Not even a map-dancer could now keep track of all the transfocal encounters and reallocation. The world was a much different place now, on shifting grounds and sandy whorls with no minute of fame.Ed was next in line, dreading that he couldn’t get to her before the next cackling reboot.
The success of his mission was paramount to the security of the fabric of reality.July 5, 2016 at 9:18 am #4091In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
“This Yannosh!” Quentin erupted when he saw the packed up mess in his suitcase.
“How can this guy always muddy up the simplest things! I wonder why Tina likes him so much.” He eyed the suitcase and seeing the neatly packed shirts and trousers, he finally laughed at his outburst.
“Yeah, that explains it!”He picked the first clothes out of the pile, and got out of the room to find the breakfast.
The air was still a bit chilly in the morning, and the grounds seemed almost deserted. He wondered were the rest of the staff was. It was supposed to be a luxury resort, and beside the eccentric Barbara with her beehive hairdo, he had not yet seen many people.
“Well, no bloody wonder it’s called the Hidden People Spa! Nobody’s up yet or what?” Quentin turned at the familiar voice.
“You look in great spirits this morning dear” he greeted Tina “How was your night’s sleep?”
“Can we skip the formalities Q, I’m already bored. Let’s have a tartine of rúgbrauð at the Þorramatur, shall we? I’m famished.”July 5, 2016 at 5:45 am #4088In reply to: Coma Cameleon
The waiter stood to the side of the of the tables and chairs on the pavement, smoking a cigarette and listening to the babble of conversation. Holiday makers exposed themselves in the sun, in shades of white, pink and red striped flesh, while the regulars were seated closer to the cafe in the shade of the awning.
Across the road, a bone thin ebony skinned man carrying a small brown suitcase paused, and scanned the street. Laying the suitcase down, he opened it and removed a tattered cloth which he spread out upon the sidewalk and proceeded to display an assortment of sunglasses and cheap glittery watches. The man sat down behind his small display of wares, leaning against the wall. The waiter felt a physical pang in his gut as he registered the expression on the face of the watch seller: resigned hopelessness. A palpable lack of optimistic anticipation. The waiter wondered how he managed to sell any watches, indeed how he managed to get out of bed in the morning, if indeed he had such a thing as a bed.
The waiter stubbed out the cigarette butt and lit another one. A group of five teenage girls picked at their pastries while passing around a bottle of sun protection lotion, giggling as they showed each other photos on their phones. An older couple bickered quietly between themselves at the next table, the wife admonishing her husband over the amount of butter he spread on his toasted baguette. A younger woman with two neatly attired and scrubbed faced children waved away a stray wisp of cigarette smoke with a righteous frown, and glared in the direction of nearby smokers.
None of them had noticed the watch seller with the small battered brown suitcase across the road. The waiter caught his eye and nodded, giving him a good luck thumbs up sign. The watch seller acknowledged him with an unenthusiastic lift of his hand.
The waiter sighed, ground his cigarette butt out with his heel, and went back inside the cafe.
July 5, 2016 at 2:21 am #4087In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
“And don’t forget the black pepper dear!” Godfrey chimed in, “it’s been known to enhance the effects drastically.”
July 5, 2016 at 2:18 am #4086In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
“Barbara!” the Dr called her assistant early in the morning.
“There has been a breakthrough! I have tested version 2.2.1 of my new organic substrate, and it shows promising results.”Barbara giggled “Well of course, Doctor. Shall we test it right away on your new patients of this morning appointment?”
“That’s tempting. I am not usually one to push for caution when science progress is called for, but… maybe, this time, not just now. There are still a few DNA kinks to work out for the solution to be perfect. We’ll see how our last subject reacts in the next days.”
July 4, 2016 at 6:33 am #4084In reply to: Coma Cameleon
Lily was lost. She had closed her eyes and was listening to the voices of the crowd. She had discovered that she could make it appear as if they were all the same voice or many different voices just by wishing it. At the moment she was more comfortable with only one voice, but the voice made no sense at all. So she wasn’t listening to it.
Her mother had once told her that when she was lost, she should always stay at the same spot so that her parents could find her. And she couldn’t speak to strangers. It was easier if she had her eyes closed.
Someone touched her arm. She pretended it was the branch of a tree. It was easier when she had her eyes closed to make the fear disappear. Her parents would be back soon.
July 4, 2016 at 6:30 am #4082In reply to: Coma Cameleon Background
At first, I think the continuity will, by design, seem to be disjointed. The reader will start off confused. But yes, I think there will start to be things that carry over as he begins to remember and assemble a personality that transcends the individual stories. This eventual personality, may or may not match up with his original personality from before the coma…probably not…but he’ll definitely begin to remember who he was. And perhaps there will be a meaningful contrast between his new transcending personality and his old real life personality.
The idea is that each story puts him/her in a situation and there’s always something about that situation that resonates with him/her. That resonating is a clue to their original real life from before the coma started.
And so the aspect that resonates becomes a part of the transcending personality and begins to carry over into the next stories.
There’ll probably be situations where there’s a conflict between the transcending personality and the story personality that he/she naturally wants to flow with.
Like, the story that they’re in might have them as a female in Greece, and he/she wants to flow with that story, but the transcending personality is there in the back of the mind, resonating as a male, for instance.
This would be like an allegory for multiple lives, perhaps, but without bringing up reincarnation, and encapsulating it into a story that any reader can believe and resonate with. Almost like tricking the reader into learning something about multiple lives and essence.
July 4, 2016 at 6:16 am #4081In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
Sophie looked dubiously at the shampoo bottle. It was smaller than the ones she was used to in the US, and It was written kókosolía. She had no idea what it meant but the picture underneath looked vaguely like two big coconuts.
She opened it, pressed the bottle to smell what was inside, then poured a bit of the white substance into her palm. No doubt there was coconut inside. She touched it. It was very oily. Maybe it was not shampoo after all. She looked at the other bottles. None smelled as good as the first one. She decided to give it a try.
After her shower she felt rejuvenated. It was like the old times, with her husband Bob they used to travel a lot and stay in all kinds of hotel. She always loved that moment when she was drying her hair and Bob would sneak in behind her and take her into his arms. She sighed. Nope, that would not happen today.
She almost jumped when she realized her hair was inflating. She had very thin hair usually and they were rather close to her head, but today it looked like they had a new life. She wondered if it would deflate as soon as she’d stop the hot hair. She hesitated but it looked almost done. She turned off the power and the hair stayed up.
She heard a knock at the door. She wondered who that could be.
“Sophie. It’s me”, said Connie’s voice.
“A moment said Sophie.” She put her old clothes on. She didn’t take much with her in her suitcase, she didn’t have enough room for clothes with all her apparatus. She checked her hair one last time, still up. Then she opened the door.They looked at each other and said at the same time : “Oh! You used the coconut shampoo too.”
“Let’s have diner”, said Connie. “As for the hair, I bumped into other guests, and the ladies all seem to have the beehive haircut.”July 4, 2016 at 2:04 am #4076In reply to: Coma Cameleon
“Aaron, it’s time.”
A female voice. But low for woman, and harsh. Not gentle like his mother’s voice. The voice on the other side of the wooden door was familiar although at that moment Aaron could not have attached a name or a face to the voice.
A knock.
“Aaron, are you there? It’s time. We can’t be late.”
Aaron’s insides contracted. Reflexively he closed his eyes. At the same time his right hand moved to cover the watch on his left wrist—a gift from his father when he turned 10 years old. He did these things without thinking.
If he had thought, if he had had the luxury of time to analyse these small movements—and it was clear from the voice that he did not—he would have come to the conclusion that he hoped to block out the truth of what the voice was saying.
“Aaron!” The tone had changed. Now, the voice implied a threat.
Still without thought, Aaron picked up his jacket and a small brown suitcase and moved slowly towards the voice.
July 4, 2016 at 12:59 am #121Topic: Coma Cameleon Background
NOTES FROM GROUP DISCUSSION:
[unnamed protagonist] finds themself in a coma, but they don’t realize it. It’s like they’re in a dream state, moving through worlds, gradually discovering their past and what’s happening. The person knows that they’re trying to find their way home, which in reality is them trying to wake up.
Once they remember their past and what happened leading up to the coma, they wake up…but remember nothing.
So, as I was trying to structure this, I initially wanted the first book to be their normal waking life and the second book being the coma and the third book being post coma and relearning stuff. But then I figured it would be best to combine the first and second books.
I wanted the reader to start out confused, just like they would be and gradually learn the back story as they went
The only thing is, that would mean that this thread has to remain written as coming from their perspective
we are all writing about ONE character essentially. obviously there are gonna be other characters, but the main thread is this one person
feel free to incorporate any and all previous characters and locations from your other threads. The protagonist will be moving through them. So he/she finds themselves in these other worlds.
They’re being swept up into an adventure right from the start without knowing a thing
let’s drop them into the middle of something exciting
It’s any time
It’s a big dream
In real life, the protagonist is in a coma right nowBut, also, you’ll have a lot of freedom to create those on the spot because neither you nor the reader nor the main character knows them until you write them
The characters in this story won’t have too much staying power because the main character is moving through so many worlds. Nearly everyone is incidental,
unless characters appear that are central to the main characters ongoing story, like a nurse for example or family
At max, there might be two or three reoccurring characters that tend to pop in more often than not as helpers
Oh, yeah, family from the back story would come in to play a lotJuly 4, 2016 at 12:54 am #4075In reply to: Coma Cameleon
It’s the Wall of Watches, where the last remaining heart beats of the condemned live on, refusing to be forgotten. The wall itself is high, with chains crisscrossing it’s face to keep a patchwork of boards in place. Threaded into the chains, however, were the watches of those who died at the wall.
The watches hung from each other. There would be one watch attached to the chains and then more watches would be strung on it’s bands. It was a practical solution to diminishing real estate on the wall, but it was metaphorical as well, representing the interconnection of hearts and souls.
Most watches were mechanical, but wound by the movement of handling. On the day of their death, or if they expected it, they’d run to the wall and fit their watch to the chains. Well-wishers would visit the memorial and handle the watches to both keep them going and to remember their loved-one once more. As long as the ticking continued, it was said that their heart remained beating in this world.
The guards would walk the condemned men past the wall to remind them of the people who came before. Dissenters.
As a line of men shuffled past the wall, an inmate leapt out of line and furiously fumbled with his watch, trying all he could to attach it. There was always one. One guy would become so overwhelmed by the empathy of the symbolism, would connect so strongly with the wall, that he’d leap out of line and attach his watch…an act which would be paid for by immediate death.
A guard watched with a certain pity. The orders were to shoot on sight, but he would let them have their last act. Right as the band slipped through the buckle, a shot was fired and the inmate fell in a lump.
All of this seemed so familiar to Aaron…or was it? Is this where he was supposed to be? He had a sudden moment of clarity while standing in that line, watching his fellow inmate fall. What was he doing here?! It was one of those moments that hits you. What in the world is all this bullshit?!
He loosened the belt on his watch as he drew closer to the wall, not wanting to seem suspicious. He would attach his watch, willingly and premeditated. Their expectations of him would not hold him ransom…rather, he’d use their own expectations against them. They would not kill him. He was in control. This was his time. This was his life. He was taking it back.
And, right as he slid the belt through, he got one last look at the black face of the watch…
July 3, 2016 at 9:38 pm #4072In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
Aunt Idle was going to visit her old friend Margit Brynjúlfursdóttir. It was all very hush hush: Margit had intimated that there was to be a family reunion, but it was to be a surprise party, and she mustn’t breathe a word of it to anyone. Margit had sent her the tickets to Keflavik, instructing her to inform her family and friends that she had won the trip in a story writing competition.
It was Idle’s first trip to Iceland. She had met Margit in a beach bar near Cairns some years ago, just after the scandalous expose on the goings on of a mad doctor on a remote south Pacific island. The Icelandic woman had been drowning her sorrows, and Idle had been a shoulder to cry on. The age old story of a wayward son, a brilliant mind, so full of potential, victim of a conniving nurse , and now sadly incarcerated on the wrong side of the law.
Aunt Idle didn’t immediately make a connection between the name Brynjúlfursdóttir and Bronklehampton, indeed it would have been impossible to do so using conventional means, Icelandic naming laws and traditions being what they were. But the intuitive Idle had made a connection notwithstanding. The maudlin woman in the beach bar was clearly the mad doctors mother.
Idle had invited Margit to come and stay at the Flying Fish Inn for a few weeks before returning to Iceland, a visit which turned out to last almost a year. Over the months, Margit confided in her new friend Idle. Nobody back home in Iceland knew that the doctor in the lurid headlines was her son, and Margit wanted to keep it that way, but it was a relief to be able to talk about it to someone. Idle wasn’t all that sure that Margit was fully in the picture regarding the depths to which the fruit of her loins had sunk, but she witnessed the womans outpourings with tact and compassion and they became good friends.
The fasten your seatbelts sign flashed and pinged. The landing at Keflavik was going to be on time.
July 3, 2016 at 4:04 am #4071In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
“Thanks,” said Bossy taking her cup of tea.
“So, tell me more about this evil fruit-loop doctor,” said Ricardo with an encouraging smile.
Bossy looked intently at him. “It’s no joke,” she admonished him sharply.
“Oh, no. No, of course not. I mean, yeah, I really want to know. It all sounds very … intriguing. And sort of creepy, to be honest. But definitely not a joke.”
Bossy relented and gestured imperatively for Ricardo to be seated.
“The doctor could best be described as a mad genius. He believed he had found the answer to looking eternally youthful but didn’t want to go through the time and expense of clinical trials through the normal channels. So he set up a testing laboratory on a small and relatively unknown Pacific Island. Tifikijoo, I believe it was called.”
“Uh huh. Actually I do vaguely remember something about that story.”
“We got the story first,” Bossie said proudly, “but there was a media ban on publishing some of the information, unfortunately. The Doctor managed to get funding for his tests through an undercover organisation whose hidden agenda was to hide an ancient crystal skull while at the same time providing them with a facility where they could continue their own secret testing into spider genomes. I can’t tell you too much about that — it was all hush hush. So, you wouldn’t have read about that in the news, I bet,” she added with a smug smile.
“Uh, no,” answered Ricardo, privately wondering if Bossy was the mad one. It was all starting to feel a bit surreal to him.
“Did the doctor know about the skull stuff?”
“No, the doctor was genuinely only interested in preserving beauty. Unfortunately, to this end, he killed one of his first guinea pigs. And tried to disguise his crime by mummifying the body. That’s when it all began to implode on him.”
“What happened to him?”
“He had some good lawyers and was found not competent to stand trial on the grounds of insanity. And the fact that all his clients had signed liability waivers helped a bit. He was sent to a high security psychiatric institution but managed to escape by reverting to his female identity—he was transsexual—and hiding in a laundry trolley.
“The doctor hated the way he was portrayed in the media and most of his venom was focused on our people. We had a guy working with us then, John Smith, and he covered the story with Connie. They got the brunt of the hate emails. John nearly had a nervous breakdown with the stress of it and moved to the country. Pity, he was a good writer.”
“So what makes you think Santa Claus and the doctor are one and the same?”
“Call it a very strong hunch. The Doctor was born in Iceland and had strong family ties there. And now I fear he has lured Connie and Sophie there in order to exact his evil revenge!”
-
AuthorSearch Results
Search Results for 'ear'
-
Search Results
-
Topic: Coma Cameleon Background
NOTES FROM GROUP DISCUSSION:
[unnamed protagonist] finds themself in a coma, but they don’t realize it. It’s like they’re in a dream state, moving through worlds, gradually discovering their past and what’s happening. The person knows that they’re trying to find their way home, which in reality is them trying to wake up.
Once they remember their past and what happened leading up to the coma, they wake up…but remember nothing.
So, as I was trying to structure this, I initially wanted the first book to be their normal waking life and the second book being the coma and the third book being post coma and relearning stuff. But then I figured it would be best to combine the first and second books.
I wanted the reader to start out confused, just like they would be and gradually learn the back story as they went
The only thing is, that would mean that this thread has to remain written as coming from their perspective
we are all writing about ONE character essentially. obviously there are gonna be other characters, but the main thread is this one person
feel free to incorporate any and all previous characters and locations from your other threads. The protagonist will be moving through them. So he/she finds themselves in these other worlds.
They’re being swept up into an adventure right from the start without knowing a thing
let’s drop them into the middle of something exciting
It’s any time
It’s a big dream
In real life, the protagonist is in a coma right nowBut, also, you’ll have a lot of freedom to create those on the spot because neither you nor the reader nor the main character knows them until you write them
The characters in this story won’t have too much staying power because the main character is moving through so many worlds. Nearly everyone is incidental,
unless characters appear that are central to the main characters ongoing story, like a nurse for example or family
At max, there might be two or three reoccurring characters that tend to pop in more often than not as helpers
Oh, yeah, family from the back story would come in to play a lot