Happy Blog Day Everyone!
Today I want to dive into the remains of the Ghost Duty sequel that clearly wasn't meant to be (this time at any rate). Before that though, let's see what Brennan and Riz are up to...
The Comic Tales of Brennan and Riz
Has this saga been everything I wanted? No.
Have I learned things? Yes.
Will I do one again after the Xmas one? We'll see.
Knowing that we are quickly nearing the last strip of this story is something of a relief. If you've enjoyed it, let me know.
Phantom Dawn: Memories of a Rose
There has been two new installments since last week, but I want to let at least three more build up before I share them. Being able to pick and choose words has worked out a lot better than before.
Ghost Duty 2: We Hardly Knew Ye
A couple of days ago I submitted another short story, for the Halloween based Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Volume 3 (get volumes 1 and 2 for free now at the links below! Don't finish reading this sentence, go get them then come back!). As I said last week, the story I'd submitted and the one I started were vastly different...in pretty much every metric.
What happened to the Ghost Duty story though? Why was it so unanimously dumped? Well, it was my fault really.
To begin with, the original prompt we were given by the dreaded Overlord, was hubble bubble, toil and trouble, which I took to mean witches. As it was also the Halloween volume so I had to get that in there. Working Halloween in there was a zinch as I remembered the old stories about all hallows eve, where the ghouls and monsters didn't come out to play. I envisioned it as the only bank holiday the unlifers would have. This allowed me to paint it as a large celebration for them. Surely everyone would love that right? This is where the villain came in. She went through a few name changes but I settled on Miranda. This was the first of the problems, not that I realised it yet.
I still needed the witch angle but that came in the form of mistaken identity that never fully sat well with me. Again, this was part of the problem. With the basics in place I blazed on and wrote up over 3k words. This included a cold opening that I am quite fond of but it is unconnected to everything else. Good news is I'll be able to reuse that easily enough. Bad news was that I'd written all that but the plot hadn't progressed an inch other than an initial encounter between Josh and Miranda. Feeling the pressure and convinced any pacing issues would be fixed in editing, I moved to hurry the plot along, only to discover that the plot went nowhere. No matter what I wrote it seemed rushed, and worst of all, nonsensical. J was forcing reactions out of characters with little to no rhyme or reason.
Seeing the clock tick down and with no real fix, I made the only decision I could. I started afresh with a completely new idea.
For that one, I went digging through my old tweets and found an idea worth exploring, and jt featured Gabriel. Win win, right? Perhaps not. That is a tale for another time though.
Till next week,
Keep on writing!
Peter James Martin
Quick Links
The Strange Tales of Brennan and Riz Volume 1
The Strange Tales of Brennan and Riz Book 1: A Boy and A Rat
The Strange Tales of Brennan and Riz Volume 2
Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Volume 1
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