Daily Archives: November 4, 2015

Nov 04 2015
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The Writer's Battle

My Ideas for Next Year

Hello my 3.5 friends.

As we approach the end of the year, we also approach the end of the one post a day for a year challenge.

Sadly, this means that once next year rolls around, I must switch my focus from blogging to novel writing.

I don’t intend to abandon the blog obviously.  I’ve worked too hard to build it up.

However, I will have to cut back to make time to write novels.

I have a number of potential projects rolling around in my head.  I feel like completing 2 projects a year is a valid goal so heres what I’m thinking about pursuing next year:

IDEA 1

A SPACE OPERA – Set 1,000 years in the future and rife with BQB’s underlying sense of humor mixed in with enough seriousness to keep things flowing.  A wayward rogue who only looks out for himself finds himself in the middle of a vast conspiracy.  He’ll need to start caring about others and quick.

NOTE:  Alien Jones will be the as yet unnamed rogue’s sidekick/pilot.  I’ve toyed with various possibilities for an alien sidekick and figured I’ve already created the perfect one.  AJ has a long lifespan and it is set 1,000 years in the future, long after BQB.  There might be a minor reference to him once befriending a human in the early 2000’s.  For mysterious reasons, he’s been ousted out of the Mighty Potentate’s good graces, stripped of his magic-like powers, and now earns his living as the rogue’s pilot.

AJ will be a secondary character – he’ll provide comic relief, be the rogue’s conscience and confidant, but the rogue will be the main character of the novel.

I have an idea to release it as a TV style book serial – not as a way to simply chop up a long book, but I legitimately have ideas where parts could end with cliffhangers where the reader would be like “Well, I gotta know what happens next!”

Alternatively, I realize maybe I should realize one book before releasing several small installments.

I don’t want to give too much away at this point other than the rogue and AJ find themselves in possession of a powerful something that various bad people/groups want and they must race against time to get it away from them.

POP CULTURE MYSTERIES – I feel like I’ve written so much of Season 1 that I should just see it through.  So I’d like to finish a season’s worth of blog posts, put them up on a spin off PCM website, and follow it up with a novel about how Jake punched Adolf Hitler in the face.

I do have many other ideas.  Many of them I love, one I love dearly.  But I also have to realize nothing gets done without committing to something.

This is like a marriage.  You’ll never develop a loving relationship with your wife if you keep cheating on her with every other bimbo you see and you’ll never develop a finished novel if you keep dumping your current project for the next pretty idea that walks along.

So I have to pick 2 ideas and focus.  Also, I realize given the rest of my life, this might be too much for one year.  If that’s the case and I need more time than so be it.  I hope to finish them both next year but ultimately, as long as I get a book of some kind published on Amazon next year, the year will be considered a success.

What say you nerds about these ideas?

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Nov 04 2015
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Pop Culture Mysteries

Pop Culture Mysteries – Case File #TBA – Kill ‘Em Again (Part 4)

October 25, 4:45 A.Mshutterstock_224428027

“No!”  I shouted.  “No don’t do it!  Running upstairs is a rookie mistake!  There’s nowhere for you to go now, girly!”

“She’s a ditz,”  Agnes replied.  “All boobs and no brains.”

“My kind of dame,”  I said.

“Ugh,”  Agnes said.  “Really?”

“Just ask my first wife,”  I said. “Her brassiere had its own Congressman.”

Together, on opposite sides of a phone line, we watched as a beautiful buxom babe bought the farm at the edge of a maniac’s butcher knife.

“This fella has issues,”  I said.  “Where are all the coppers?  Someone needs to run this palooka in on any number of charges.  Breaking and entering.  Assault.  Battery.  Attempted murder.  Actual murder.  And I’m not sure what specific crime it is to wear your victim’s entrails as a hat but it’s got to be against some kind of law somewhere.”

Only one survivor left.  He hid off to one side of an open doorway, only to bash the murderer’s face in with a shovel as he walked into the room.

“Ahh,”  the hero said.  “Time to celebrate!  I’ll have a glass of champagne, maybe a nice snack, take a nap…”

“No!”  Agnes shouted.  “Kill him again!”

“I’d of pounded this cat’s face into hamburger and set him on fire by now,”  I said.  “No.  Come to think of it, I’d of just fed him to good ole reliable Betsy.”

“Betsy?”  Agnes asked.  “A girlfriend?”

“No.  A gun I keep under my coat at all times.”

Silence for a moment from Agnes’ end.

“You need help, Jake,”  she said.

The hero’s back patting session was cut short, literally, when the psychopath cut him in half.  What a gruesome sight.  Worse than some of the depravity I saw in World War II.

“Which movie do you want to watch, next?”  Agnes asked.

“Ahh,”  I said.  “Sorry Aggie old gal but I have to make like Fred Astaire and shuffle off.  I’ve got a report to file.”

“OK,”  Agnes said.  “I think Herb’s finally going to sleep for awhile anyway so I’d better join him.”

“Herb’s one lucky fella,”  I said.  “If I were over seventy, wretchedly ravaged by age and with no other options, your door would be the first one I’d knock on, Ag.”

“It’s…it’s too late to explain to you why that’s rude.  Thanks.  This helped me get my mind off of my problems.  You know, it’s just so hard sometimes, to be a caregiver for an ill loved one.  I try to do my best but it’s so difficult to…”

“Yeah, yeah,”  I said.  “Sorry Aggie, but I’m a dick, not a shrink.  Sayonara.”

I hanged up a phone.  It was time to give Battler the goods.

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Nov 04 2015
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Pop Culture Mysteries

Pop Culture Mysteries – Case File #TBA – Kill ‘Em Again – (Part 3)

October 25, 2015 – Midnightshutterstock_239019751

The air was stale – cheap food, booze and leftovers.  I wasn’t helping the situation with my cigar.  My head was reeling from the evening’s festivities.

Upstairs, there was a couch in my office with my name on it.

But I needed to find out what the hell Battler wanted.

I slit open the manilla envelope, procured the piece of paper inside and read:

Hatcher,

A group of teenagers in peril.  A vicious psychopath wants them dead.  One by one he picks them off until the last one or two, depending on how gracious the film’s screenwriter was feeling at the time.

Somehow, our hero manages to get the upper hand.  He shoots, stabs, maims, or even runs the killer over with a car.  Alas, thinking the madman to be dead, the protagonist celebrates too early.  To the audience’s dismay, the killer gets up and starts chasing our hero around again.

Jason.  Freddy.  Leatherface.  Happens all the time.

Why, Hatcher?  Why, oh why do heroes in slasher flicks refuse to double-tap?

I’d heard that phone books had become a thing of the past and that it was possible to get a person’s number by dialing 411.  I tried it.

“Hello, thank you for dialing 411, how may I direct your call?”

“Uhh, yeah, hiya Toots,”  I said.  “Do you know Agnes?”

“Who?”  the operator asked.

“Agnes the Librarian.”

“You want the number for the public library, sir?”  the operator asked.

“Jeepers H. Crowe, dollface,”  I said.  “What kind of a question is that?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well I doubt the library is open at this ungodly hour, don’t you?”  I asked.

“I have no idea what you want me to do, sir.”

“Agnes,”  I replied.  “Get that old broad on the line and make it snappy.  I’m a busy man, see?”

“Do you have her last name?”  the operator asked.

I slapped my forehead.

“Oh for the love of Edward G. Robinson’s sneer,”  I said.  “What was it again?  Aloysius?  Anchorage?  Alabaster?  No…ABERNATHY!  Yes.  That’s the ticket.  One Agnes Abernathy please.”

“I have one listing for Herbert and Agnes Abernathy,” the operator said.

“That’s it.  Put me through sweetheart.”

All of a sudden there was a robot talking to me.

“The number you have requested can be dialed for an additional charge of thirty-five cents by pressing the number one…”

Thirty-five cents.  Highway robbery if you asked me.  “Aw screw it,”  I thought as I hit the number one.  “I’ll just send an invoice to Battler for it.”

“Hello?”  came an old lady’s voice.

“Agnes!”  I shouted.

“Yes?”

“Listen, I’m sorry to bother you at home but I’ve got quite a caper transpiring here…”

“Who is this?”  Agnes asked.

“Jacob R. Hatcher, Pop Culture Detective,”  I answered.

“Oh for the love of…”

There was a long trail of unlady like obscenities I won’t bother to offend the ears of you fine 3.5 readers with.

“Jake, are you nuts?  You can’t bother me at home!  This is very inappropriate for you to be calling my home this late.  How did you get this number?”

“Information,”  I replied.

“Are you some kind of weirdo sex pervert?”  Agnes asked.  “Are you stalking me?”

I laughed.

“No offense old gal, but I wouldn’t touch you with Herb’s business,” I said.  “Say Agnes, now that you’ve got all that out of your system, what’s a fella gotta do to find a monster movie around here?”

“A what?”

“A mons…Jumpin Jehosaphat, Agnes, are you deaf?  MONSTER….MOVIE!”

“Jake, I’m not in the mood for your nonsense,”  Agnes said.  “Herb’s been up all night throwing up in the bathroom and I’m exhausted.”

“Yikes,”  I said.  “Sorry to hear that.  You should tell him to lay off the bottle.  That’s why I do when I start praying to the porcelain god.”

I could hear the disdain in Agnes’ voice.

“HE HAS CANCER YOU JACK ASS!”

“Oh,”  I replied.  “Even worse.  Tell him I’m pulling for him.  So howsabout that monster movie?”

“It’s Halloween time,”  Agnes said.

“What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?”  I inquired.

“Put on your TV and there will be one on every channel.  Were you dropped on your head as a child?”

“I doubt it,”  I said.  “Ma Hatcher was a world class baby rearer.”

I grabbed the remote control and turned on the TV Ms. Tsang had mounted on one of the side walls of the restaurant floor to entertain the customers.

The old gal was right.  Every channel I flipped through had images that were gorier than the last.

“Thanks Ag,”  I said.  “I’ll let you go.”

Silence.  An exasperate sigh.  Loud heaving sounds in the background.

“What the hell,”  Agnes said.  “I’m going to be up for awhile.  Tell me what channel you’re putting on and I’ll watch it with you.”

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