Spooktober 2023, Days One through Ten

SPOOKTOBER 2023!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group argues over.  I have always liked the idea of creating iconic monsters, like the Silent Hill guys, or the Cenobites, etc.  To that end, and as an additional challenge for myself, I came up with a way to break down the existing iconic monsters, to make sure I’m addressing different aspects of creature design.  The idea is that if I’m not ignoring or forgetting any of the elements that can contribute to a monster’s success, I’m more likely to chance on a hot discovery.  Putting that to the test this Spooktober, each of my entries include Themes, Motifs, Colors, Shapes, Textures, Powers, and Places, as ways of describing my starring monsters.

That was the idea, but shortly after the event began some jokers thought it would be cool to add another layer of challenge with optional additional themes for each day.  Many of those optional themes were kind of facetious, and as I compulsively tried to include all of them, my ambition to do iconic monsters disintegrated.  I still had the fields to fill out in my descriptions, but now what purpose are they serving?  I dunno.

My posters this year are a little more epic because I finally caved to paying a few bucks for Midjourney.  Midj can only very rarely do outputs that work for me unmodified; almost all of these are modified with web-based photoshop knockoff Photopea.  A very few actually include elements from DALL-E 2 and even Artbreeder, which has some fun new features to help it keep up with the big boys.  On posting it I haven’t done all the tags and alts, so inaccessible!  I’ll try to get to that later.


SPOOKTOBER DAY #1 — Ghost

TITLE:  Collecting Dust

PREMISE:  Ghosts are usually mere phantoms of their former selves, with little will to survive, pantomiming the emotions of their own personal hells until they disintegrate after a few or a few hundred years.  But some few are driven to survive, to rage against the dying of the light.  They awaken to the realities of their new world – the world of the dead – and get by in the only ways possible there.  Basically, you need to find the best hiding place ever, or you need to power up, by feeding on weaker ghosts.

A collector folds the ghost of a young lady into his essence, to use her trauma and her power to extend his own unlife, as he has done many times before.  He feels like he should honor those victims by holding some of their memories and essence in reserve, not letting them be forgotten, but he keeps more of this particular ghost intact than usual.  Is it love?  How do you love somebody who has become part of yourself?  Because you did the supernatural predator thing to them?

Collectors:  Themes: Bowerbirds and Landsknechte;  Motifs: Cloth, Sewing Materials, Junk Drawer Contents;  Colors: Monochrome, Ivory White to Sepia Black;  Shapes: Humans, Sometimes with Other Human Parts Grafted or Overlaid like Double Exposure, Renaissance-Baroque Cut in Clothing;  Textures: Bone, Translucent Ectoplasm, Teeth, Thread, Lace, Pale Wood;  Powers: Absorbing Ghosts, Classic Ghostly Distortions of Space, Time, and Life / Death Energies;  Places: The world of the dead is smaller than the world of the living, consisting of places ghosts might dwell, with sludgy rotten chaos between them.  Basically, there’s no equivalent of a place so remote no human would reach it, so everything is compressed.

HORROR ELEMENT:  This is the afterlife. No heaven or hell, no way out, just a continuation of the dreary exploitation and emotional torments of being alive.


SPOOKTOBER DAY #2 — Subterranean (× Dance or Asian Horror or War)

TITLE:  Conrad’s Sojourn in the Mausolean Deeps

PREMISE:  An Alice in Wonderland type scenario, with a sexy young gothic man with long black hair (asian horror lol) finding a graveyard leads to a dreamworld of magic (subterranean).  The creatures there are in eternal war (war) with each other.  Are they real?  Does any of this matter?  Is this just some shit he is imagining as he lays dying in a crypt where nobody can find him?

The Dominant Faction, The Crystalline Empire:  Themes: The Falsity of Romance, Performance (dance);  Motifs: Imitation Nature;  Colors: Pastel Rococo or Jewel Tones;  Shapes: Humanoid and Artificial;  Textures: Sculpted, Manufactured, Painted, Mineral, Wood, Metal;  Powers: Industrialized Murder;  Places: The lowest layers of the Mausolean Deeps are crystallized into pure artifice, an endless rococo mansion interspersed with garden caverns.

The Insurrection, The Worms of Wrath:  Themes: Fury and Insanity;  Motifs: Faerie Tales and Napoleonic War;  Colors: Earth Tones to Black, Jewel Accents;  Shapes: Humanoid and Chimerae, Plant and Animal Features;  Textures: Fur, Leather, Felt, Rustica;  Powers: Chaos;  Places: The uppermost layers of the Mausolean Deeps are rootbound caverns, leading down to the warzone with the enemy.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Obvious Alice in Wonderland scenario.  But wouldn’t that suck to really be in an absurd situation with a bloodthirsty edge?  Or is that too real to be compelling in fiction?


SPOOKTOBER DAY #3 — Cursed Object (× Chick Flick or Industrial or Paranoia)

TITLE:  Holy Matrimony!

PREMISE:  A Lebanese christian immigrant lady is getting married to an WASPy American dude, and her future sister-in-law wants everything to be perfect in the 21st century bridal industry sense (chick flick).  She buys an antique middle eastern brass vase from a sweaty guy who is asking way below market value, and brings it to the bridal shower as a gift.  It’s wrapped in papers covered in writing, and jammed up with a cruddy clay seal set in place with cruddy wax.  A few glasses of wine in and the bride and future sis try to open the seal together.

Big mistake.  ‘Twas the brazen vessel (cursed object) spoken of in The Sworn Testament of Solomon.  Demons possess many party-goers and random peeps in the neighborhood.  The clay seal contained Solomon’s ring and the wrapping paper had the Testament to explain its use for the ladies.

Solomonic Demons:  Themes: Cravenness, Corruption, and Bullying;  Motifs: Unnatural Light and Distortion, Like Iridescence and Rippling Heat Waves,  Colors: Vivid Human and Animal Hues;  Shapes: Mostly Human, Some Chimeric Elements;  Textures: Scales, Fur, Coarse Hair, Beautiful Flesh – Like the Creatures in a Fundie End Times Pamphlet;  Powers: Super Strength, Poisoning, Telekinesis, Summoning Insects, etc.;  Places: Whitebread Suburbia and The Utility Facilities on the Other Side of the Hedges.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Who is demon possessed and who is not?  Unwilling to look bonkers from yelling “out, demon!” at friends and neighbors, it becomes a social puzzle (paranoia).  The final confrontation with Lucifer takes place in the tunnels of a local waterworks (industrial).

 

SPOOKTOBER DAY #4 — Body Horror (× Medical or Road Trip or Kiddie Horror)

TITLE:  Bobby Nelson Vs. The Zits

PREMISE:  Bobby (kiddie horror) has bad acne (body horror) and tries an experimental medication on them (medical).  The Zits leave his body as little homonculi that grow human-sized and murderous.  Only he can defeat them, by shoving them back into his skin.  Monster hunting uncles as thinly veiled parodies of the Supernatural boys take him in pursuit, in the back of their muscle car (road trip).

The Zits:  Themes: Building Pressure and Release;  Motifs: Corruption, Acne Gone Wild;  Colors: Green, Amber, Pink;  Shapes: Giant Fetuses;  Textures: Slime;  Powers: Endless Regeneration, Slime Bursts;  Places: The Clinic, The Junior High, Route 666.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Puberty sucks.  Buff uncle mans make Bobby feel like a gross little nerd.


SPOOKTOBER DAY #5 — Aliens / Space (× Apocalypse or Victorian or Beach)

TITLE:  Darwin’s Finches

PREMISE:  The Galapagos Islands (beach).  Charles Darwin (victorian) is studying the wildlife when alien spores (alien) get into the plant life.  Finches eat the seeds, then get an appetite for human brains – and a high reproductive rate.  When your brain is eaten by a finch, the bird pilots your body like a mech, makes you pull eggs out of your ears and stick them in other people.  First the crew of The Beagle, next the world (apocalypse).

Alien Finches:  Themes: Survival of the Fittest;  Motifs: Eggs and Feathers;  Colors: Yolk, Blood, Mottled Earth Tones of Feathers;  Shapes: Birdy Profiles;  Textures: Bristles and Fluff, Crystalline Shells and Slimy Drips;  Powers: Get in the Fucking Robot Shinji (memes);  Places: The Galapagos Islands.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Bird-brains are coming to get you, Barbara.


SPOOKTOBER DAY #6 — Devils & Demons (× 1970s or Soap Opera or Gangster)

TITLE:  Your Heart Belongs to Me

PREMISE:  1970s (1970s) TV show (soap opera) set in a hospital.  Nurses, doctors, administrators, patients, security guards, janitors, etc… they’re all having hot, naked affairs.  But you need other kinds of plots, so I guess La Cosa Nostra (gangster) is stealing organ donations or something.

The show was ordinary enough, but got cancelled on pressure from the Vatican when an attempt at moralizing backfired.  The writers had been ordered to demonstrate that the sinful actions of the characters were wrong, and chose to do so by making it the influence of a hot succubus nurse (devils & demons).  But the public loved the succubus and demanded they write her into more and more of the show.

Simonia Mefistofilli:  Themes: Passion and Excitement, Delight in Decadence;  Motifs: Sexy and Nurse;  Colors: Olive Skin, Pale Green Eyes, Thick but Luscious Make-up;  Shapes: Va Va Voom;  Textures: Soft Skin;  Powers: Stoke the Sinful Within;  Places: Hell and Santa Maria’s Hospittali.  Or however you spell that shit in Italiano. 🤌

HORROR ELEMENT:  Don’t have hot naked affairs in piles of stolen organs.  Jesus said.


SPOOKTOBER DAY #7 — Folklore (× Art House or Home Invasion or Teen)

TITLE:  Werner Herzog Sold Me to One Direction in The Purge  um…  Karasu Kiriyu

PREMISE:  J-Pop star Kiriyu X Yama makes life weird for everyone around him (arthouse).  Fumi, the daughter (teen) of his manager Mari, has a romance with him.  But what happens when the manic pixie dream boy’s original band comes back for revenge, flapping down chimneys (home invasion) and battering the windows of their home in the mountains with feathered wings?  Those mofos are crow goblins – karasu tengu – and so is Kiriyu.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Tengu (folklore):  Themes: The Freedom of Rock, Savagery, and Transcendant Beauty;  Motifs: Feathers of Course, and Other Birdy Details;  Colors: Shiny Black and Pale Grey,  Shapes: Punky Boys, Birdy Silhouettes;  Textures: Taut Skin, Bristling Feathers;  Powers: Shape Shifting, Flight, Illusion;  Places: The Hip Parts of Osaka (do those exist?), Backstage, Skyscrapers, a Mountain Mansion.

HORROR ELEMENT:  The concept of shapeshifters treated abstractly again, like in my previous spooktobers Touch Me I’m Sick and its sequel.  Kiriyu himself could be seen with a single claw, with wings growing out of his eyes, with bird heads for fingers, whatever.  His bandmates invade the home in a series of increasingly surreal horror events.  At last, the horror is love lost, as Kiriyu just flies away with Fumi’s heart.


SPOOKTOBER DAY #8 — Witch / Wizard (× Grindhouse or 1980s or Video Game)

TITLE:  Shredders

PREMISE:  Scotty used to be physically active, but got into video games and ended up bumming around the house all the time, enfeebled.  Even though his new pal Rico was long-haired, his parents were just glad the dude could convince him to get out of the la-Z-boy.  Little did they know, Rico wanted to get Scotty involved in the IRL version of (video game) Sk8 or Die.

The world of extreme skate boys (1980s) was improbably sleazy and stereotypical (grindhouse).  Greasy bookies, mobsters, fast girls with wall-o-bangs, boys with bare midriffs, spray-paint and cardboard and blood on the cement.  But Rico isn’t just bringing Scotty into that world for funsies and moneys.  It’s about the spiritual side of skating, man (witch/wizard).  The place where you lose yourself and find yourself all over again.

Shredders:  Themes: The Apollonian and The Dionysian;  Motifs: Young Mens in Motion and Painfully Bright Skies;  Colors: Black and Blue with Streaks of Red;  Shapes: Skinny Bods with Scant but Baggy Clothes;  Textures: Flesh and Bone;  Powers: Touching the Godhead When They Should Be Seeing Stars,  Places: Night and Day, School and Concrete Hell.

HORROR ELEMENT:  How much skin are you willing to lose, how much of your body will you destroy, to free your soul?  Scotty and Rico go all the way, and leave nothing but streaks of blood and broken decks on their way to Nirvana.


SPOOKTOBER DAY #9 — Southern Gothic (× Parody or Holiday or Virus)

TITLE:  Columbus Day in Paradise

PREMISE:  The US Virgin Islands (southern). Columbus Day (holiday) means not much more than a different theme in cocktail lounge decor.  But a Taino descendant waitress catches a freaky fever (virus), and pressured into working through her illness (gothic), spends all day hallucinating the atrocities of Cristoforo Colombo, overlaying her day-to-day sights of tourists and tax scoundrels sleazing their time away.

Colonialism:  Themes: Greed and Dehumanization;  Motifs: Torture and Genocide;  Colors: Blood;  Shapes: Shackles;  Textures: Wounds;  Powers: “Manifest Destiny;”  Places: The World That Was Lost and The World That Remains.

HORROR ELEMENT:  I ain’t gonna reiterate the reasons Columbus’s name should be as hated as Hitler’s, but u can google it to see what our heroine was seeing.  At the climax of the story a manager forced her to watch a remedial customer service video which, through her fever, became a very grim parody (parody).


SPOOKTOBER DAY #10 — Cyberpunk (× Caper/Heist or Lifetime/Mom Movie or Erotic Thriller)

TITLE:  Love Heist

PREMISE:  In the ’90s Cinemax used to air a few different genres of movies as the night wore on, all very low budget: softcore erotica, action adventure and horror films.  On the one hand, movies with the ilk of Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain; on the other, Billy Blanks and Don “The Dragon” Wilson.  For one golden moment, some crazy-ass producer crossed the streams, and Love Heist was born.

In a dystopian future (cyberpunk), minds are managed by corporations, emotions doled out for extortion prices to a desperate public.  Billy Blanks and Shannon Tweed are regular joes (lifetime/mom movie), firefighters in the suburbs of NeoCyberVanCouver.  But they are tired of their loveless marriage, and hatch a wild scheme to steal love (caper/heist) from EmoCo Inc’s DeathTower.  With kickboxing and sex (erotic thriller).

EmoCo Inc’s DeathTower:  Themes: Soulless Crapitalist Reselling of Basic Human Needs;  Motifs: Stainless Steel and Vending Machine Interfaces;  Colors: The Blue Light Omnipresent in These Genres;  Shapes: Probably Those Generic Alien Knockoff Hallways;  Textures: Cold Metal;  Powers: Sell You Emotions;  Places: DeathTower, a Tower of Death.

HORROR ELEMENT:  OK, not exactly horror.  I think their emotional control units are fried while fighting their way thru the tower, and feel love for each other even tho they lost.  Aww!  Queue five minute sex scene.

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A Chain of Beauties 01

As discussed here and here, I’m going to try to write a novel real quickly on the blog.  Be ready for foolery.  I’m “showing my work” so SPOILER ALERT!  The entire plot outline is below the fold on this post.  Will also add some carriage returns so people coming directly to this article can skip it if they feel the need.
[Read more…]

Use Your Delusion

Call this the sequel to my post here, as well as a GnR reference.  When last I left you, I was contemplating an exercise in high-speed novelling, to be posted here over the course of this time I took off work to recover from surgery.  The way holidays fell, I don’t have to go back to work until the 20th.  The idea thus far – High fantasy, something to do with court intrigue, a romantic young royal in peril, most of the cast as bisexual.  Read the previous post and comments for what few additional details there are.

As I circle the table furiously trying to come up with a plot outline, I have fewer ideas for plots than I have for characters.  But any ideas are good ideas.  There are going to be a group of immortal nymphs, sleeping at the start of the story and posed elaborately by royals that keep them as a sort of living sculpture.  One or more nymphs will be awakened, some may die, haven’t decided.  There will be an elven “royal grandmother” who contributed to the royal line and has some prestige as an immortal noble, but lacks actual title because no human blood.  Does she favor her current royal descendant or work against them? Undecided.  The other day I was thinking about the bisexual music of Queen as a possible source of inspiration, including the epic cheesiness of the Highlander soundtrack.  Not sure.

I will continue “thinking out loud” about this in the comments as the evening winds on.
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*”circling the table”:  when you have all your inspirations in a heap and you walk around it looking from multiple angles, hoping for understanding.

Drugged Delusions

Back from surgery, the pain meds haven’t quite worn off, and I’m feeling more ambitious than sensible.  I took the week off work without pay (starting now, running thru next week), which is what I raised those funds for.  During this time, unless I get my sense of reality back, I might try to compose a short novel.  And I’ll share it with you right here on the blog.

I’m going to use the setting from this RPG I’d like to make someday in my pipe dreams.  It’s a stock fantasy setting in a Final Fantasy way.  Think high magic, lots of “character classes” and “races.”  The difference is that LGBTQIA people are heavily centered.  In my pipingest pipe dreams, book one will be about gay boys, book two the gaydies, book three the bi, book four the trans, and book five the ace.  In the world, different types of LGBTetc people would be associated with different walks of life.  Like, everyone would think of adventurers as gay dudes, which would become a self-reinforcing concept like gay dudes in performing arts IRL.

Book one of the (possibly never to exist) RPG is a stock adventurer-focused game which assumes all adventurers are gay dudes.  That was the first idea I had, which was a way to show people the absurdity of presuming cishetness by presuming all players to be gay dudes – the most classically reviled type of queer people ever, still the focus of homophobic propaganda from Uganda to Utah.  To have the other rainbow RPGs be set in the same world, I’d need to come up with other subcultures for the characters to be associated with.  So in that world, lesbians would be associated with the defense of settled places, from farms to cities.  Bi / pan /etc people would move in aristocratic circles, have adventures of court intrigue.  Trans / gender variant people would be associated with the arts (in a high fantasy / adventurous way of course), and ace / adj-ace-nt people would be scholarly esoterical wizardy types.

All this could be taken as problematic, like the voice of this universe making big assumptions about inherent qualities of different rainbow people, but it’s just a setting thing, not my beliefs, right?  Plus I don’t care too much about upsetting the most aggressive LGBTQIA partisans because I ain’t gonna read my reviews, heh.  But all this explanation of my RPG setting is just background to explaining where my novel that i’m totally going to write in a week is coming from.

So I’m gonna do the Bi RPG novel tie-in, working title: “Tales from The Amphisbæna: A Chain of Beauties.”  I need a plot about court intrigue, and will ponder that on this post.  Seeing as how I’m doing this work publicly, if you want to make suggestions on the novel, you can.  But I’ll be moving pretty quickly if I do this, and belated suggestions will be less likely to be implemented.  Gotta get those ideas in quick.

I haven’t read much history of the feudal / monarchist era upon which fantasy is typically based, but I’ve been struck in what I have read by certain recurring motifs.  Nobles and royalty were often at odds, with the greatest domestic threat to any monarch typically coming from noble schemes to replace the current dynasty with one of their own blood or one that will treat them more favorably.  As the nobility were the most direct oppressors of the peasants, those serfs would sometimes have a more favorable view of a monarch than a local lord – especially if that monarch took a strong or adversarial stance with the nobles.  IIRC, this was true of both Ivan the Terrible and Vlad the Impaler.

So I’m thinking the story takes place in castle of the monarch, where schemes abound.  Maybe there’s assassination attempts and nobody knows who’s behind the plot.  Maybe the monarch is the big bad and noble schemers are in the right.  The best way for I, as the author, to show proper solidarity to my class is to have all the rich be scumbags that must drown in their excess and be eliminated by peasant revolt.  But, you know, I’m liking the romance of a monarch today, if only in the context of pure fiction.  Charles Windsor can have his head turned into a hood ornament.

I don’t have any firm ideas yet, but I’ll need them quickly.  Holler at ya comrade.  What I need is the bones of the plot.  A monarch who is romantically delicious is in conflict with some kind of enemies.  Takes place with mostly bisexual characters in courtly settings.  What kinda twist could make this interesting?
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WLW Rep and the Triple Six Mafia

I don’t read current science fiction & fantasy / SFF books, didn’t read much of ’em back in my day either.  But I am around some amateur authors inspired by and working in that genre, and sometimes for yuks I watch video essays about stuff I’m not actually interested in.  So I found out about these books by Piper CJ pitched with bi representation, that – aside from their other issues –  are just utterly failing to make the lady love happen.  Those links go to long video essays so skip ’em if you don’t have the time.  The point is that very hetero’d-out scenarios get the word count and lady love is some abstract distant thing that is there in theme but almost never on the page.

And with the young authors I know that try to make women-loving-women / WLW content in their own stories, be it bi or les, they often seem reticent or shy or perhaps just asexual about it.  That’s valid, but bi women and lesbians should get to have stories where the ladies are allowed to kiss more than once per five hundred pages, if that’s something they’re into.

Most of this music video by Triple Six Mafia is just bros posing in the cloughb, but there are a few bits with ladies touching each other affectionately.  Unlike much lesbian porn made for men, they don’t look at the camera in the middle of their scenes, to tell you this is for the benefit of men.  They’re just, hey, let’s look at each other with longing, let’s caress, and let’s do this weird drug out of baby bottles.  In so doing, this video has more affection between ladies than some entire books sold on the back of that premise.

This got me thinking about the gender-reversed scenario.  What if “fujoshis” (weird geek girls horny on the concept of gay dudes) went mainstream and made rap like this.  You’d see stocky women in polo shirts and khakis acting tough while gentle-eyed mans get all touchy-feely in slow motion.  I wonder if anybody has made that music video yet.
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EDIT TO ADD:  Reminder, still doing my fundraiser up through April 21st (stopping early if I reach stretch goal ahead of then).  Make at least a three dollar donation and I’ll rhyme a word of your choice in a rap.  While I appreciate the contributions of people who have given generously,-I’d like to see more and smaller donations.  So far I only have four words to rhyme.  If I don’t make the goal, this rap will remain a text poem.  If I reach $500 I will record myself rapping.  If I reach $600 I will do a short video.  Help cover the wages I’ll be losing from this medical situation, thanks! –goal met, fundraiser closed.

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MonsterHearts Days Nine Again, Six, and X

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 marched toward Valentine’s Day, the theme was supernatural romance.  I didn’t make the deadline, but will see if I can put ’em all on the blog by the last day of this month.  I repeated Day Nine because I forgot I’d already done it when I went to collabo with my boyfriend on X amount of days.  Day X is a tradition of mine where I take all the prompts that didn’t win votes and roll them into a mega-prompt.

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 9 — INANIMATE

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Splinters.  ‘Nuff said.

TITLE:  RUDEWOOD

CHARACTERS:  Corey Blighter is a genderqueer punk rocker who somehow turned the abuse of the world into a kink for getting insulted.  They meet a tree of the same enchanted species that spawned Pinocchio, once upon a time.  The tree is just rude and insulting to everyone who passes by, playing cruel tricks as much as its limited mobility allows.

PREMISE:  Corey makes the tree feel some type of way.  But is it possible for a rudewood to love?  They are made out of sap, splinters, and insult comedy.  The way they reproduce is by making humans so mad they cut the tree down, and this tree succeeds with a less twisted human than Corey.  The love must end.

THE HOOK:  Or must it?  Rudewood personalities can survive the chopping.  Corey can get the piece that has their lover within, and make some kind of a mannequin Gilbert Gottfried out of it.  Happily ever after, babe.

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Rudewood"

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 6 — INCORPOREAL

TITLE:  VOCALOVE

CHARACTERS:  The User, a similar character to me and Cubist’s MC from AIsaac, undefined and ambiguous via the narrow frame around the narrative.  Melpominy Muzik, a cheap Eastern European Hatsune Miku clone.

PREMISE:  The User finds an old CD of Melpominy in a used record shop in Hungary and tries to use her in their own music.  But the icon of the character, the sweet things she says within the program’s UI, could she be true waifu material?  How can she possibly have so much love in less than 700 megabytes?

THE HOOK:  One of those stories where you wonder if the lover is real or just a figment of the ardent one’s imagination, thereby a reiteration of the “Is it better to live in dreams?” theme.

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Vocalove"

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY X — THE LOSERS: BEASTLY, DEMONIC, EXPERIMENTAL, FIERY, GIGANTIC, MINUSCULE, MUTATED, OVERPOWERED, SEASONAL, SHADOWY

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Bad Ending?

TITLE:  THE VICES OF DR. CARLO

CHARACTERS:  Dr. Vicente Carlo, a mad scientist.  Profesor Hector Olivares, his on-again off-again tempestuous gay lover.

PREMISE:  Dr. Carlo is a descendant of wealth, whose family avoided any revolutionary ire with delicate politicking during turbulent times, retaining those means with a low profile.  But generational inheritance can only last until a generation comes too dysfunctional to hold onto it.  Vicente is that man.  While he has the silver tongue of his ancestors, he has bizarre obsessions that spell his doom.

At the hacienda Dr. Carlo experiments with the intersection of science and the arcane and dark arts, with the often reluctant assistance of Profesor Olivares.  The profesor is more broadly travelled and conventional in his interests, bringing back tales of scientific advancements whenever he comes to town.  The doctor takes those tales and turns them into nightmares.

One Día de los Muertos (SEASONAL), Dr. Carlo used the power of dick to convince Prof. Olivares to help him contain the power of the heavens in a special battery.  But he doesn’t let the profesor know that the battery is full of satanic (DEMONIC) mojo. They harness a thunderstorm, draw the power of the heavens, but it combines with the power of hell, and the battery explodes.

Profesor Olivares is MUTATED into a rampaging BEAST that feeds on FIRE, heat, electricity, leaving blackened ruin in his wake. He sets off in pursuit of these things, burning up the nearest city and its inhabitants, one piece at a time. He becomes OVERPOWERED and GIGANTIC, bringing down the military.

To save his lover, Dr. Carlo must venture inside the broken battery. He takes an EXPERIMENTAL potion to become MINUSCULE, but runs afoul of SHADOWY demons that protect the strange realm of the machine, like an immune system. He takes a lot of hits, but eventually escapes into an unrecognizable region.

THE HOOK:  He has actually passed into Hell, and when the military takes down Hector with tanks, he meets his boy there.  “Oops, we both died. Better luck next life?”  They can be lovers in Hell.

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "The Vices of Dr. Carlo"

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MonsterHearts Days Nine, Eleven, and Twelve

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 marched toward Valentine’s Day, the theme was supernatural romance.  I didn’t make the deadline, but will see if I can put ’em all on the blog by the last day of this month.  These ones are collaborations with my boyfriend, The Beast From Seattle, aka Cubist Vowels, aka Joseph Kelly, editor and contributor to The Midnight Collection.

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 9 — INANIMATE

TITLE:  THE VOICE

CHARACTERS:  Lonely man Tyler.  The Voice, a mysterious voice on the radio dial.

PREMISE:  When Tyler is upset by a song, he turns the radio dial to what should be static.  But he hears a compelling voice, and it seems to hear him.  They get to talkin’, fall in love, but gradually the nearest obnoxious radio station becomes more powerful, takes up more of the dial, overpowering Tyler’s love.

To get The Voice back, he must mess up that obnoxious radio station.  Maybe he blows up their tower, or pirates a rival radio station and changes its frequency.  But how can he have a happily ever after here?  I dunno.

THE HOOK:  Why is it passionate?  How can somebody love somebody else without a physical presence?  No idea what they look like?  No chance to be with them physically?  They’re on some Abelard and Heloise shit.

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "The Voice"

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 11 — ARTIFICIAL

TITLE:  AISAAC

CHARACTERS:  The Protagonist, a sad person.  AIsaac, an art-producing artificial intelligence.

PREMISE:  The protagonist, a person who we know almost nothing about, is just pouring their feelings into prompts on an AI art generator.  The AI, named AIsaac, produces meaningful responses.  Though they have no words, only images, somehow that’s enough, and love happens.

THE HOOK:  Why is this passionate?  The protagonist initially is just experiencing joy at making interesting art happen with this tool, which, as far as they know, has no feelings of its own.  They pour out their heart just the same, which is both sad and cute in its way.  But what happens when the machine can return that affection?  How can one express love with nothing but images?

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "AIsaac"

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 12 — CELESTIAL

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Alien Abduction.

TITLE:  BE NOT AFRAID

CHARACTERS:  Nicola, a laborer building a cathedral.  Hod, an alien being of pure energy.  The jerks, a bunch of alien scrublords who kidnap people, like those Fire in the Sky bozos.

PREMISE:  Nicola is working on the buttresses of a cathedral when some aliens abduct him to do experiments or just kick him around and stuff, in their grody spaceship.  While he’s running around the ship hiding in lockers like an indie horror game, a more kindly alien presence comes to him.

Hod is a being of pure energy who got stuck on the alien ship, but it can communicate telepathically with Nicola, and acts as a guardian angel until they can both be freed.  It can project an image of itself as human-like into his mind, and love can happen.

THE HOOK:  Lovin’ under the gun.  It’s not realistic for characters to have makeouts when they’re in mortal peril, but we all love that stuff, don’t we?

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Be Not Afraid"

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MonsterHearts Days Seven, Four, and Five

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 marched toward Valentine’s Day, the theme was supernatural romance.  I didn’t make the deadline, but will see if I can put ’em all on the blog by the last day of this month.

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 7 — NATURAL

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Fascist Elfs.

TITLE:  NIGHT OF THE SHINING HOST

CHARACTERS:  Sonny Kassaye, an Ethiopian Irish trans dude.  Conor O’Halloran, a leprechaun trans dude.

PREMISE:  Sonny is in a transmasc support group at a relatively rural college in Ireland.  One of the guys in his group is not much more than a metre tall, but very self-assured.  Turns out,  Conor is one of Mother Nature’s leprechauns, and he’s come back to rock and roll.  And trans his gender.

Anyway, some elves from the Seelie Court go all nativist and try to exterminate all fun-loving enemies.  It’s Night of the Living Dead but with elfs outside the cabin.  Conor uses leprechaun powers, I guess, and also a revolver with cold iron bullets.

THE HOOK:  Love under pressure.  Conor is all badass and cool, so Sonny is impressed.  But is it a good foundation to a relationship?  Sequels will tell.

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Night of the Shining Host"

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 4 — SHAPESHIFTING

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Paranoia.

TITLE:  MARY PUCK

CHARACTERS:  Sonny Kassaye, an Ethiopian Irish trans dude.  Mary Puck, a pooka.

PREMISE:  For meritorious service to the lower class faerie folk, Sonny has been allowed to walk their faerie paths.  He is a college student by day, faerie anthropologist by night – when he can bear the weirdness.  It turns out several of the faeries he interviewed in that capacity were all the same girl, a compulsive shapeshifter who can assume any shape – human or animal or hybrid.  But she never wears the same face twice, and she’s fallen in love with him.

THE HOOK:  Sonny’s relationship with Conor was dashed upon the rocks of circumstance, and being flexible in attractions, he is amenable to Mary’s courtship.  Sometimes she’s a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes etc.  But how can you love somebody without a consistent face or voice?  Just a rotating cast of hyperactive manic pixie dream weirdos?  It’s a dramatic affair.

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Mary Puck"

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 5 — PARASITIC

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Drowning, Suffocation, Abuse Mention.

TITLE:  KING KELPIE

CHARACTERS:  Sonny Kassaye, an Ethiopian Irish trans dude.  Patrick Donovan, King of the Unseelie Court, a kelpie.

PREMISE:  Sonny’s relationship with Mary Puck ended in tears, but the king of the rough-hewn faeries swoops in to love the pain away.  Problem is, the king is a kelpie, a breath vampire who keeps nearly killing the hapless human.  Also, he’s kind of abusive.

Surprise, this is a story about how Sonny got back together with Conor.  Outraging the king by stealing his human intended, Conor becomes an enemy of the UnSeelie Court.  Dashing feats of derring-do ensue.

THE HOOK:  The part with the Parasitic Monster is a passionate love.  In his most human-like form, Patrick is a huge muscly man, so it’s hard not to get fired up by the erotic powers of the big body.  But who wants to have their breath literally taken away?

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "King Kelpie"

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Rap Battle

This rap ain’t got composure like a whack-ass thesis

Your boyfriend’s on ma caque like a monkey rhesus

I’m processed in the thigh bags like urine and feces*

You know the label’s fucked that they had to release this

that’s all i had.  sorry.
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*only works if you pronounce “urine and feces” like Max von Sydow in Dune (1984).

MonsterHearts Days Two and Three

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…

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 2 — DEMONIC

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Horror Content, it’s a Spoopy Event Yo.

TITLE:  DER HEXENFLUG

CHARACTERS:  Young Marthe and demonic Dorothea.

PREMISE:  Marthe is invited to an artist’s commune in the Black Forest, and joins for the prospect of relative freedom from a repressive sexist culture.  But freedom was a trap!  The patriarchs were right, libertines are really demons that wanna drown you in devil sauce.  Dorothea seduces her with lust, of course, but also the power of flight.  There’s something about flying naked through the summer night that gets her ronks off.

THE HOOK:  Like Leánnan last year, there’s the romance of the succubus.  Is this sinister creature capable of genuine affection?  Marthe doesn’t know, but it feels like it.  It’s so passionate.  But then, it has to be a ruse, to drag her soul into hell.  When she lets herself be taken into the night sky by Dorothea, who knows if she will disappear into the darkness forever?

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Der Hexenflug"

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 3 — NAUTICAL

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Colonizers Depicted Romantically, at Least Not Actively Colonizing as of Moment in Story.  Also War, and the Usual Horror Content.  Body Horror?  Sure, why not?

TITLE:  MEN OF WAR

CHARACTERS:  João and António, young Portuguese sailors who are star-crossed lovers.

PREMISE:  The characters are separated for most of the story, which won’t do for a romance.  Probably this could be accommodated with past / present intercutting.  In the past, the poor boys join a Portuguese merchant ship out of economic desperation.  They fall in love.  Classic sailor goof.  Then a Spanish ship attacks, killing everybody onboard.

João survives drifting on a hunk of wood until rescued.  Heralded for surviving those bastardy Spaniards, he goes to work in an admiral’s office.  He finds out Spanish ships are mysteriously having their crews wiped out by an unknown malefactor.  The admiral is cool with Spaniards dying, but wants to know why, for strategic reasons.  João volunteers to investigate by going undercover in the Spanish navy.

Meanwhile António survived by being mysteriously resurrected by an aquatic hive mind, a massively overdeveloped physaliid cnidarian.  He is incorporated into the hive mind, but empowered with lethal stinging tentacles, he crawls aboard Spanish ships in the night to kill everybody.

THE HOOK:  João’s Spanish ship is attacked by António and the lovers are reunited.  It’s cool, but it seems António is suffering more than just his monstrous condition.  They discover his vengeance is harming the hive mind, and he must return to sea.  Can João convince him to give up his vengeance?  If he does, will they be forever parted?

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Men of War"

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