MonsterHearts 2025 – Day Two


Don’t Miss Posts.  This MonsterHearts, I’m also having one regular post a day, if you should prefer that kind of thing.  Just look at the posts before or after this one.

MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept.  As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  For this first few, I’ve tried to just use “edit” mode in MidJourney to iron out irregularities, even trying to make a legible title in the AI program.  While it’s cool you can now hammer the hands and text into shape, there are a lot of disadvantages to doing that, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, or placing your title just so.  Probably won’t keep up the effort for long.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY TWO:  SHADOWY

TITLE:  A SHADOW OF LOVE

CHARACTERS:  Carla Butler: the Debutante, Lavonne Tipton: a The Shadow

PREMISE:  Some rich white dude found himself with the power to see what evil lurks in the hearts of mans, and sought to overcome the urgings of his own dark shadow by questing for justice.  He learned the skill to cloud men’s minds, and became something of a monster.  A monster for goodness, outside of society, fighting crime, forever misunderstood.

What he didn’t know was that being a The Shadow is kinda like vampirism.  He created a new category of creature – in himself – and ultimately passed the curse to one of his underworld associates.  Lavonne found herself seeing evil lurks and doing the mind clouding.  She came to feel that her life as a lady hustler was a disguise, an illusion, and that her true self was blasting on thugs with paired .45s.

While working the Case of the Sacred Scorpions, Lavonne encountered a lady of economic privilege, socially isolated due to being biracial in a place and time where that could be socially isolating.  Carla became fascinated, but her father was like, don’t even think about it, girl.

THE HOOK:  Too late, dad.  Carla was going to bag that Shadow, if she had to become a criminal to get her attention.  Forbidden hijinks ensue.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.