And the answer came from a mate in the form of a true story followed by a question. I read the story and thought it’d be a great story if it was fictionalised and ramped up a bit and some cool characters helped tell it. And I wasn’t the only one who had that idea.
Where to now?
A shared project, a collaboration, something different. 🙂

Yesterday morning before I went to work, a fecked around and came up with a “outline” that is a kind of hybrid outline. Yes, I know, outlines to me are the devils work … but … a collaboration requires an outline of sorts. Also. it’s a hybrid novella/screenplay outline. It gives us the bare bones (beats). We need that.
I set about creating four characters that need to tell this story. They’re a wee bit stiff at the moment but they’ll loosen up as we get to know them. They exist as bullet points. Yep, they are that new. I can’t see them properly yet. I’m starting to though. There’s one I already like more than the others, I can sense his annoyance with one of the other characters. And it amuses me but also shows me a lot about him. His name is Tom Keller. He might be really hard to write because he knows far far more than I do about a certain subject (I can build a simple device – in theory – but the one in the story is crazy clever and unbelievably big) so I’m going to need some expert help for technical shite. But I’m working with someone who has experts on tap (so to speak).

(Yes, I said device. I can’t tell you exactly what the device is. Not yet. 🙂 Let’s wait and see how this pans out.)

Apart from the “outline” I cranked out three short chapters. I know, I know, I belong in overachievers anonymous. There is a lot on my plate BUT none of it was a story (not really anyway). I’ve got TWO novels ready to go for this year so I figure Nana and the Cronies of Doom will forgive. me if I spend some time playing with some other folk. Ronnie might not be so forgiving but as long as she keeps out of the new project, we’ll be fine!

So far the working title is “The Device” couldn’t be more boring so we’ll see how long that sticks. Hopefully we can crank out 20-25k without too much effort and get this story on its feet.

Anywho, that’s what I’m doing at the moment. The perfect distraction while everything else hurries up and waits. I really needed something to occupy my brain and this will do it.

So there you go. Ask a question & get an answer from an unexpected source. 🙂