Something Strange - A Story Through Blog Posts

"Something Strange" is a tale written through blog posts about book characters who find themselves no longer within the pages of their book. With strange people and creatures suddenly appearing in Rose Chocoo with powers beyond imagination, it seems the little gated community would be soon finding itself on government radars. It may be up to Tristan Quicksilver to get the characters back home safely before the original story becomes naught but a blank journal. 

Hello everybody! No idea how this will work, or how often I will write on it... but I thought it would be fun to try out. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Each blog post will be considered one chapter. 

Newbies, please start here: Something Strange

NEXT CHAPTER

Something Strange

A Story Through Blog Posts

Chapter 1

What would happen if one moment you were doing everything you were supposed to and the next moment you found yourself suddenly nowhere near where you had been? What would happen if that place you ended up turned out to be right next to a child's bed? Exactly what sort of protocol was there in dealing with someone attacking you with a broom, a bat, a strange and unusual weapon as they screamed bloody murder and called you a burglar?

What would happen if the same exact scenario (with minor alterations) happened in multiple households at the stroke of midnight in one quiet little street?

Well, for Tristan Quicksilver, sitting in house number 13 and completely awake when he shouldn't be that was the exact kind of disturbance he saw in the force that fateful night. To be fair, though... in his case, he wasn't the one standing next to a child's bed. Tristan was that child in bed. One minute he was pretending to be asleep and the next he heard a thud. When he turned his light on, he found out there was a real live knight on the floor in his room.

Outside his window, he began hearing loud noises coming from all the neighbors' houses. He glanced at the knight. The guy was out like a burnt bulb and smelled like dog poo. Tristan looked out the window and gaped rather openly at what he saw. Various odd things were being chased out of the other houses on the block.

A witch flew out a window on a broom. A variety of sparkling lights flew out of a chimney. A few came back down only to spiral around and zip past Tristan's window leaving glitter and visions of fairies dancing in his head. "Wow..." Tristan gasped.

This was... going to be so cool! He had a knight on his floor. Sure, the guy smelled like stale beer and too much ladies' perfume, but there were fairies flying by his window and he could still hear the cackling of witches. And, okay, the neighbors seemed pretty upset - but this was awesome anyway.

NEXT CHAPTER

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Please feel free to leave your thoughts below!

Something Strange chapter 1 © 2014 Jaimie Gross

Go to Chapter 2




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please feel free to leave your thoughts below! 
Something Strange chapter 1 © 2014 Jaimie Gross

Day five of NaNoWriMo challenges

Day five Nano Challenges

#1

Cupid's Shotgun has Exploding Buckshot

You know those teen dramas that crop up everywhere? They’ve begun to invade books… Or maybe they were there in books before, I just never noticed. Yep, this is another way to do romance.

Mary had a little lamb, but Bo Peep, well… she’s got a flock of sheep. So Mary got jealous of Bo Peep and there were cat fights over sheep and lambs and wool was flying everywhere, and BaBa Blacksheep just decided to use his three bags full of wool to make yarn and turn it into sweaters and sell it at the farmer’s market.

The above little story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but sometimes teen dramas don’t. That would be because teen drama is the equivalent of watching a train wreck in slow motion. You just can’t turn your eyes away. But it can be fun to write, fun to read, and fun to watch on TV. For instance, the TV show “The 100” is all of the following: dystopia meets Lord of the Flies meets teen drama meets “Sixteen, Soon to be Pregnant, and HAVING ALL THE LOVERS”.

If you want to write romance in the teen drama style, it will involve over-complicated geometry. Decide if that’s what you want for your story and if so, go ahead and start popping out characters. You’re going to need a lot of them. Just remember if you go this route to make sure your plot is solid.

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Day five Nano challenge #2

Cupid's Latest Upgrade: Proximity Mines

BROMANCE.

SHIPPING.

You know it’s a thing now, right? And the verdict is in on it, and people love it. Canon pairings are awesome, but readers are going to do this thing called shipping other pairings. They’re going to be like, “THESE GUYS ARE SO AWESOME!!!” And in some cases, fans are going to find pairings that are complete opposites and have never done anything but try to kill each other and they’re going to be like, “THESE GUYS ARE SO AWESOME!” So no matter how hard you try to get Jane and Peter together, you’re going to find that Peter and Megra (who never ever met and are not even in the same fandom) are getting paired together.

Be aware of who is in your book, and what the relationship between them is. It can’t hurt to spend a few minutes crafting their relationship (whether it’s Matt trying to kill Robbin, or Robbin and Jane having some witty banter).

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Day five Nano Challenge #3

Cupid Goes Nuclear

No, seriously. Completely nuclear. I mean full on radioactive, face burning off, mutations, two-headed deer, apocalyptic nuclear fallout. These are the type of relationships in which everyone gets hurt. Jackie loves Frank but Frank has been having an affair with Regina and Regina is refusing to admit that she’s a lesbian. No one is admitting to themselves or each other that they’re all having problems and everything keeps spiraling worse out of control until Johnny, the next door neighbor, gets mistaken for Frank and is shot as a result. Innocent people are hurt because of the romance problems in this situation, and it doesn’t always mean that person is involved in the situation. Definitely keep in mind the pain and suffering that revolves out of a nuclear relationship.

Day four of NaNoWriMo challenges

Day four Nano challenges

#1

Butterfly Ripples / The Butterfly Tsunami

"I'm just really not in the mood to date," Wendy said to her friend Mary. "After my last boyfriend Peter kidnapped and isolated me from my family, getting me hooked on pixie dust and turning me into some mother figure for dozens of kidnapped children like he had some oedipus complex, I'm pretty sure I've sworn off men for an eternity."

Like Wendy in the above statement, we all know or have been through something rather traumatic before, so we're usually well aware of the psychological damages that may occur after an event. Unfortunately, as writers, sometimes its easier to avoid the drama and pretend things didn't happen. You see it in TV shows all the time: someone dies, but everything is hunky dory in the next episode. But people aren't that simple in reality. Think about your character's past, present, and future. Where has she been, where is she now, and what is she doing later? Has she suffered the loss of a loved one, and every time she sees crayons begins to weep? You're writing a story, but every story has back-story. Give your character some history that will shape her future. Or his, if you have a male character... I'd best not go eliminating the hairy-er sex.

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#2

Cupid’s First Kill

Romance is a complication in books, but you know we all love and desire the inclusion of it. Sometimes our happily ever after ends not so happily. Things can go wrong. One or both get into an accident. Someone gets murdered. Someone gets cancer. Romance is not just for the happy ever after book about the shut-in princess who wears a glass slipper and just happens to have tiny feet and a fairy godmother. It’s a mood setter, too. Romance can make the entire book comical, or heart-rending. Decide whether you want romance in your book, and if you do, what type of mood it should set.

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#3

The Therapist

“Something crazy this way comes.” Edward told his friend Jacob as Bella approached.

There comes a time in every book when you have to decide whether you want to keep going down the path of destruction your characters are insisting upon, or install a mega rewrite that would give a character more personality than cringe-worthy neediness and lip-biting. Whichever option you choose, it’s up to you to make it work. However, I want to recommend a few reasons to introduce some kind of therapist character to your story.

-One of your characters is a drug addict and they’re dating crack

-Your main character is a damsel in distress

-A character decides to throw herself off a cliff because her boyfriend broke up with her

The first one isn’t quite so bad. You’ve got a vampire and a human. Okay. The second one is starting to rock the foundations a bit. I’m the sort of reader who likes strong female protagonists and even stronger evil villainesses. The third one gets me wondering what book burning is like. Seek help for your characters if necessary...

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#4

Cupid Traded the Bow for a Gun

Romance… ah, the spice of life. Now consider who you want to romance your main character. Great, you have an idea… Now cut that character out. Does the story still stand on its feet? Unless the story is a romance genre novel, the main character should still be able to solve the murder of the last king AND take over the throne without that pesky lover. That being said, romance is fun and we like it. So put the lover back in. I know, I’m a pain. Do this, no wait, undo that.

Why am I getting all crazed about romance, you ask? Because as a reader, I don’t want safe. I want a romance complete with all the crazy. Plus, the titles I came up with for the romance series of nano things make me giggle so I’m writing it. Anyway, you’ve got two characters. Stryker likes Nimberly, and Nimberly likes Stryker. Fantastic. Write a short story and I’ll read it. I don’t want to read such a safe relationship in a novel. I want drama and difficulty. That’s not to say I want teen drama (that’s for a future post) where everyone is in love with everyone. I just want complications. You’ve got like 450 pages to fill, so if you’re going to fill them with references to how everything is perfect, you won’t get many people past page one.

So for your novel, think about your characters. Think about Nimberly and what annoys her. I’m sure Stryker is all good and well. He’s the epitome of happily ever after Prince Charmings. But instead, try crafting a character for Nimberly that creates friction and tension in her life. You want sparks to fly, right?

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Day three of NaNoWriMo challenges

Day Three Nano Challenges

#1

Opinions Count

People, as you know from looking at yourself, usually have strong opinions and not everyone is wishy-washy and about to change opinions on very large issues. If your character is a career politician, they're probably going to be the sort to form opinions based on either what will get them further ahead in the game. If your character is a no-name nothing of a creature from the back-woods of Oz who didn't get even a passing mention, it's likely that they will form their own opinion and not change. Try considering your characters stance on large topics related to your plot (or even not related to the plot). For instance, someone getting unjustly murdered and the police just want to find a culprit so they choose the most obvious person. An injustice followed by another. Opinions can be part of the driving factor that gets your character to do what you want them to do which is solve the plot.

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#2

A Surprise For The Writer

When I finish a book, one of the factors that figure in to how content I am afterward is directly related to whether or not the book ever surprised me and how many surprises it managed to whip out. I like twists that sucker punch me in the face, so that when they occur I'm left gasping and recalling how I should have known that would happen because x, y, and z were total lead ins and--AND HOW DID I MISS THIS?! But not every surprise can have a lead in. At the start of the book where we're at, you have the chance to shock the reader and yourself like we all went to an electroshock therapy session gone wrong. It's easy to shock readers now without lead ins because you then have the rest of the book to ease the reader out of the shock and tie it into the plot. Try shocking yourself with something plot-like.

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#3

Suspected Killer

The only black and white book that grabs my attention is non-fiction. There's no gray area to a book of recipes. Fiction has a lot of gray area. There's a murder in a mystery, and unless you do something unique with the butler (such as have him abducted and stuff him in the closet of some other criminal's bedroom so that criminal can assume his identity for the purpose of kidnapping the heroine who happens to be the criminal's best friend back to a city full of criminals--don't worry, I changed my killer just now) then it's safe to assume he's too obvious. And the more obvious the possible killer is, the less you're going to want him to be the real killer. Craft your villain, if not on paper, at least in your mind. As a reader, I love (and hate) when the villain ended up being likable.

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#4

Changing Leaves

Setting is very important, but what is more important is changing it. Every novel becomes a visual novel in my head. I want to see what the characters look like, and the place around them. I want realistic people interaction. Remember to keep devoting time to describing what the character sees, hears, feels, and tastes. Not only will it fill your word count, it will also help the reader envision the world you want them to see.

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Day two of NaNoWriMo challenges

Day Two Nano Challenges

#1:

Borrowing Traits

You know all those things about the people around us that make us unique and individual from one another? For instance... the cold never bothered Queen Elsa anyway (whips off crown and throws it). Think about the people you know and the things that make them unique and pick one of their traits. As you write, give that borrowed trait to a character whether it is your main character or some sidekick that gets or was already bumped off in the next 1,000 words.

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#2:

Diverse Worlds part one

Take a good look at the world around you. They're everywhere... People... You can't escape them all! Chances are at some point in your life, you will have met, are meeting, or will meet someone of a different nationality than you are. If you can, try to introduce a character whether they're dead, alive, or in a portrait on the wall that is of a different race than your main character. Bonus points if your new character is of another species--for fantasy, that's easy to do. For non-fantasy, there's always Halloween or cosplay! (It's not someone who has to stay in the story unless you want to.)

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#3

Diverse Worlds part two

We've covered the introduction of a diverse character (somewhat--let's face it, it's NaNo, so we don't have time for life, much less complete coverage!). Now let's chug some drink of choice and consider how the diversity affected our main character. How does this alter his/her point of view? Do they regularly meet wild Doctors who spout Timey-Wimey nonsense yet save the world from impending doom? Is it the first time they've seen a vampire--even if it is just on a painting? What are your character's thoughts?

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#4

Forgotten Occurrences

One of the biggest pet peeves I have with books is when books never mention things every living creature (and zombies) have to do. My best example of this is actually a zombie example. All zombies do is bite people and eat them, right? Well, wouldn't it be weird to read a zombie novel and there's no mention of people getting eaten, or the fear of getting eaten, or running away from getting eaten? It doesn't annoy me enough to put a book down, but when I write, I probably overcompensate with dramatic food scenes or overemphasize a character's need to pee. Your task is to write your character doing or thinking about something natural. Snacking on trail mix, snapping their gum, realizing they haven't peed in thirty hours and there's a werewolf coming at them...

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Day one of NaNoWriMo Challenges

Day One Nano Challenges

#1

The Count of Time

Pick a set amount of time (10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes... 1 hour? Your choice!) Set a timer on your phone or writing program of choice and just write.

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#2

A Sight To See

Be inspired by an image and add scenery to your book! Describe a room, a window view, a landscape on the journey to whatever your book's goal is.

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#3:

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

You've added description ... now let's get a feel for your character! Did you pick a male or female? What do they look like?

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#4:

Getting To Know You

You described some scenery. You described your character. Does all of that make your character feel anything? What do they think of that tower in the distance that juts out of a forest like some random piece of grass out of a farmer's mouth? What about the - oh my! DEAD BODIES! Run away, run away...! Write how your character feels. Write some of their thoughts.

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The Doll in the Window

It's here - It's here! Whee! Sorry it took so long... It's been a busy time for me.

Cover image differs here a little bit from what it is on the official cover of the book - sorry!

The Doll in the Window written by yours truly (me) and the wonderful Australian illustrator Jeff Chen. See Jeff's deviant art page where he is accepting commission work. He clearly lists out what he charges for work. He's easy to work with, too, and very nice. Even though there's a time difference, I haven't had any problem with working with him... so go get on his commissions list! Ha ha ha.

Here are a few details about the story that kind of go around the story of its creation...

When writing this story, it began as an attempt at a 4 line poem which was supposed to test my illustrator's ability to interpret my writing into an image. Two hours later, it ended up being somewhere around 1,700 words long... and very little of it managed to be at all poem-like. The above picture was Jeff's test interpretation based on the story I provided. Something I really loved about that picture was the little girl peeking in the window, and the fact that you can see the doll's face reflecting in the window. It's little details that stick out.

The summary of the story is that it is written from the perspective of the doll. Over time, she is changed. The owner of the shop repairs her shoes, sews her new clothes, fixes her hair...

The back of the book blurb: A doll is meant to be played with. She brings joy and inspires imagination. Day after day she waits in a out of the way shop for the one special child who will take her home. Days pass and seasons pass, but the people pass by, too. Will she ever find her special child?

As the author, if I analyze my own writing (I try to do that sometimes to figure out where I got something right - or in most cases, where I went wrong) I find that the doll story can reflect a number of different themes... These analyses may infer slight spoilers ~~ be warned.

• Acceptance - Changing who we are to try to be accepted doesn't mean we will be accepted. There are those out there who will like us exactly how we are, and there are those who like us how we are and will help us better ourselves... there are those who will take us from where we are collecting dust and ensure we are not alone in life as we struggle through those life altering changes - and help us accept that we can't change everything.
• Modern trends - The doll goes through different clothes through the story, implying that by giving something old a newer appearance, it will become more appealing to the eye and may be more likely to be taken in by someone. This is both true, and not true. Over time, fashion trends and even household trends change. The color bisque (a weird off-white-yellow-tan) used to be very popular for washing machines, but it is no longer a prominent color.
• Loss of a loved one - (This is a back-story spoiler...) This was something that was not outright stated in the book, but I left a line in the book that suggested the doll was only in the shop window because the shop owner's granddaughter had passed away at a young age. The shop owner believed the doll was very special, and that his granddaughter and the doll went on many adventures together.

This story is written for ages 3 and up. My niece had some awesome interpretations of the pictures (she's three years old) and honestly her story was far more enjoyable and adventurous. But on the other hand, if you like your stories following a more natural order of thinking this might just be a great book for you.

Let me know what you think of this. Comment below. :)