Ideas

This page is a sort of catch-all bin of ideas for novels I may write in the future.

Bloody Innocent Heroes (Working Title)

I haven’t selected a proper title for this series yet, but The Four Corners refers to questing all over the world to collect artifacts. Alternatively, Innocent Blooded or Bloody Innocent Heroes do also sound suitable. I currently favor that last option.

Some mysterious and secretive individual brings a group of adventurers together.

Two of them will be condemned prisoners that have been put in cages beside one of the main trade routes of the kingdom. Both were caught red-handed, so to speak, completely covered in the blood of victims they murdered, though they have no idea why they did it. Each of them remembers doing the deed, but can’t remember what motivated them.

One will be a priest that should have lost his powers as a result of his actions, but he hasn’t and he doesn’t know why. He turned himself in and confessed to his crime. During his trial, he was accused of secretly working with a death god as an explanation of the fact he retained his powers, but that isn’t true.

The other is a dwarf warrior/smith, who bludgeoned someone to death with his smithing hammer, a fact that deeply disturbs him, not only due to the death, but also from disrespect of his favored tool. He’s convinced that someone mind-controlled him and he insisted on this story throughout the trial.

The third member of the party is man that used to be a human thief, who crossed a wizard and got permanently transformed into a dog, though he retains his memories, for now. This dog finds the first two in their cages and takes pity on them, stealing food for them. Unfortunately, he can’t read or write, putting a real damper on communication.

The priest is bothered by the theft, but accepts the food, because he will otherwise die. The dog doesn’t like the dwarf, however, because they initially eye them with great hunger and says, “There’s good eatin’ on a dog, even a scrawny mutt like that.” The priest shares the food with the dwarf.

The fourth member of the party is an impressionable teenage witch, who finds them in their cages and sets them free, but she claims she’s working on behalf of someone else.

In her case, she assaulted someone with a club, but she doesn’t know why. She’s perplexed by the fact she didn’t know her victim and wasn’t using magic to attack them. The watch caught her in the act and she was sold as a slave to pay her debt to society. Her new owner is allowing her to work off her debt by performing tasks for him, including freeing the others.

The main characters are mostly grateful for what their benefactor is doing for them, with the exception of the dog, who’s deeply suspicious, but can’t express himself properly.

They’re taken by the witch to a secret, mountain fortress, which once belonged to some bandits.

Only the witch ever speaks with their employer and she passes along word of what he wants done. Their employer insists that he believes they’re all innocent and claims he has other agents investigating their cases, to find evidence to clear their names.

Meanwhile, he’ll provide them with food, shelter and even some spending money, if they’ll search some ancient ruins for a series of magic artifacts he’s collecting.

The real truth is that the three humanoids are patsies and their employer is a ghost. He possessed each of them, in turn, taking over just long enough to get them in serious trouble, while simultaneously eliminating two of his previous agents and sending a warning message to a third.

He has no intention of helping his new agents out of the predicaments he’s put them in.

The artifacts are part of an ancient magical device that can supposedly grant a ghost some rather serious power, which should be enough to keep him solid all the time, on top of making him nigh-invulnerable.

The witch is aware that he’s a ghost, but believes he’s hiding that fact to avoid scaring the others.

This band of misfits will collect the pieces of the device and the smith will reassemble it, with the help of the witch.

Just before the device is handed over, the dog will grab it and run off. The ghost will lose his temper and say too much as he chases. The others will be shocked by the revelation, ultimately siding with the dog, leading to a knock-down, drag-out fight with their employer.

The device will be used to force the ghost to pass on to the afterlife, which is the true purpose it was designed for, and their first adventure will come to an end, but without clearing their names.

This could easily become a series, with the characters doing various jobs while they seek to clear their names and turn the dog back into a human.

I’m not sure what universe this will be placed in, but The Book of Newts and Rumors of War/Null War would both be fitting.

If I choose Rumors of War/Null War, then the witch will be the one with the dragon trapped inside her body. This is based on a dragon demi-god trying to eat the entire world, to satiate his hunger.

The mother of this witch faced the demi-god, alone, while her baby daughter slowly died of something like a birth defect (she’s a chimera of a witch and a null, a condition that’s supposed to be impossible to survive).

Seeking to stop the dragon and give her daughter’s inevitable death meaning, the mother uses her magic to seal the dragon inside her daughter’s body, hoping the dragon will die with the infant.

The magic costs the mother her life and the dragon is sealed away, effectively bonded to the girl’s life force. The mother dies thinking the dragon is doomed, but the dragon manages to save the girl’s life, in order to save his own.

The girl has both dragon and witch powers, making her basically immortal, so long as the dragon remains trapped inside her.

If I go this route, then this series will serve as a prequel to Rumors of War.

I think I’ll begin the opening scene something like this, focused on the priest and the dwarf (their cages face different directions and they’re effectively back to back):

Priest and Dwarf are in a pair of rusty, iron cages, beside a major trade road. The cages dangle from an iron beam that’s mounted between a pair of heavy, stone plinths, both of which are to one side of the road.
The two of them are back to back. Pries faces the road and Dwarf faces the wilderness.

Priest: I think someone’s coming up the road!

Dwarf: Really?

Priest: It’s a little hard to tell, because my eyes aren’t in great shape, but I see movement. I hope it’s someone coming to feed us!

Dwarf: Fat chance, ye cracked priest, because feeding us is against the law. Ye and me are supposed to languish and die, on public display, remember? The only thing anyone can give us is water, and that just helps us linger a little longer, which is what makes it cruel and unusual punishment.

Priest: I…I think it’s a woman carrying a sack of bread. That looks so tasty!

Dwarf: Me hasn’t had bread in…in…

Priest: How long?

Dwarf (weeping without actual tears, because he’s dehydrated): Me doesn’t remember, because me’s so hungry!

Dwarf tries to pick the lock on his cage with his bare fingers, yet again. He finds no success, for a lack of lock picks, but it would do him no good if he succeeded, because the cage was welded shut while he was unconscious, a fact he hasn’t realized yet.

Priest: It’s definitely a woman with some bread.

Dwarf: Me’d like to see that, but me’s too weak to shift me legs.

Priest (hallucinating): Oh yeah! Really nice looking, too. Well-proportioned. And the bread is also rather attractive: those big and long loaves that crackle when you squeeze them. The good stuff!

Priest bites into an imaginary loaf of bread handed to him by the imaginary woman.

Priest: Curse my eyes! I’m hallucinating again!

Dwarf: A real pity. What was it, for real?

Priest: Just a dirty old mutt that stopped to lick my face, which has slightly quenched my thirst.

Dwarf twists and cranes his neck, to get a look.

Dwarf: There’s good eatin’ on a mutt like that. Break its neck and we can feast!

Demon Blood

This would be a spin-off of Ashen Blades centered around the life of James Simmons. He’s a fairy, like his mother, Lara, but he appears totally normal until probably the age of fifteen or sixteen, at which point he’s badly injured and needs an emergency transfusion.

The only person available at the time with a compatible blood type is the Hunter/Artemis Watson, a half-demon. She donates her blood and it activates all of the young man’s dormant powers.

He also turns out to be rather good at demon extermination, able to force demons to transform, with a touch. He uses this power to forcibly turn demons into weapons, which he uses to kill others. Best of all: his power eventually fully drains his weapons of all magic, permanently killing them.

Unfortunately, he becomes a half-demon, and the demons now seek to use him in their plots to conquer the world, very similar to Artemis.

No Title (Something about Reggie Stewart)

In writing the early flashback scenes of She Seeks Peace, I really enjoyed writing Reggie. He’s a 1920’s and 30’s private detective that hunts and kills demons. He’s also considered by other demon hunters to have a screw loose, one of many things that made him so fun.

I find the idea of writing at least one novel about him to be appealing, but if I do, I’m fully leaning into the Noir genre, femme-fatale and all. I’m kind of thinking some mystery involving witches and powerful magic would be good. Probably multiple sides (three or more) looking for some ancient magical artifact, in a kind of race.

Some potential interested parties:

• The good witch
  • She wants the McGuffin to keep it out of evil hands
  • The other groups paint her as the villain
  • I think Reggie will have a thing for her, but will never be quite certain if he can trust her
  • She’ll give her life to save Reggie, finally proving herself
• Evil witches
  • Technically, the demons are involved with this one
  • It’s a world domination thing, perhaps?
• Vampires
  • Who knows what they want with it?
  • I like the idea of treating the vampires like a dangerous wildcard
    • Sometimes they help Reggie, while at other times, they shoot at or threaten him
    • Everything they do will be designed to prod him in the right direction
    • Until the end, when they reveal themselves and try to kill him for real
  • I think the vampires might be the ones that bring Reggie the case
    • The classic femme-fatale should probably be a vampire
  • Probably the reason the vampires seem so inconsistent is the fact they aren’t a unified faction and they often fight among themselves
    • It doesn’t help that every time Reggie meets them, they try to magically charm him into helping
• The Order of Ash and Smoke
  • The Order is the only group that Reggie actually trusts
  • Master Lagrow has no interest and only gives Reggie indirect support

Perhaps everyone is stumped and the vampires brings the case to Reggie, who figures it out, only for all parties to somehow get the clues from him, then it becomes a race to the X he marked on a map. It might be fun to take him to Egypt for the climax and play with another good 1930’s genre. GURPS Egypt would be good reading material for research, since it’s so well-documented and referenced.

Most likely the Hunter would be in this (Reggie always referred to her as his ‘silent partner’), but I’d rather she were no more than a cameo in it. At the time, she was like a stray cat, coming and going as she pleased. It probably wasn’t until mid to late 1930’s that Reggie retired from field duty and let the Hunter do all the fighting, which was when she became more involved.

Further, the Hunter had a lot of misplaced confidence in Reggie, right up until the day he died, when his luck finally ran out, which further leans into her not being very involved. I think she’ll be in the office, playing at being Reggie’s secretary (or just playing in the background), but she won’t get involved, because the case doesn’t involve demons.

Reggie was 48 in 1922, so if it’s early 30’s, then he’ll be in his late fifties. 1932 would be about right. I’ll have to make sure I get the Hunter’s age right. I might have to put in a scene of Reggie and the Hunter having their photo taken together, for the photo she carries in her hat.

It might be fun to establish the truce between the vampires and the Order in this novel, perhaps at the end. I could put Knox into it, who might be referred to as “our young Knox” by the other vampires, who are mostly older than him. It may be the vampires that taught Master Lagrow charm magic, though he clearly took it further.

Notes regarding Reggie:

• He hates witches, even good ones
  • This story may be the reason
  • Especially considering the romantic sub-plot involving one

Medusa: Not a Monster

I’ve always had a soft spot for Medusa, who really got the short end of the stick in Greek mythology.

I would like to write a reinterpretation of her story, with her cast as the misunderstood protagonist, on a journey to find peace of mind.

I don’t know how faithfully I might follow the original, because I never cared for the way she was victimized at every stage of her tale, but I do like the idea of depicting her in a sympathetic light.

It would be a challenge to write, particularly due to the reasons she was turned into a monster.

Fighter for Hire (Working Title)

In Fighter for Hire, a young and inexperienced fighter answers an ad from an established group of adventurers seeking a front-liner. He interviews for the position and is given a trial period to prove himself in the field, while the group takes on a low priority job, to try him out.

As they work, the fighter asks why they needed a fighter and the others begin to tell the story of what happened to their old fighter, each of them taking turns at telling the story. Each character interrupts the narrative when they think the previous person is missing or glossing over details, taking over the story.

Each chapter will be from the perspective of the current storyteller, with short meta elements and arguments over details.

The overall tale will be about their last big job, which went wrong. Each part of the story will illuminate a small point of how things went wrong, contributing to the overall failure that lead to the death of their missing friend.

The start of the climax will cover their fight with the big boss of the dungeon/bandit leader/dragon/whatever it is they were working to eliminate. It will end with the group losing their fighter and only barely escaping with their lives.

The true climax will involve the group tackling the same job again, with their new fighter. Armed with a more serious approach informed by their past failures, they’ll win the day.

Second Star (Working Title)

Second star is a re-telling of Peter Pan from the perspective of Captain Hook, with Peter cast as the villain. The setting would be based on a twisting of many fairy tales and I’m planning to go for a gritty, realistic feeling to the story, despite the fact it will be satire. I may go with a Noir-style of writing, with guns and tech from the 1940’s, though there will certainly also be magic and magical creatures.

Hook would be a police captain with a personal grudge against Pan, who’s the king-pin of the local drug trade, which is based on Pixie Dust, a hallucinogen literally produced by shaking enslaved pixies.

True to the original story, Pan cut Hook’s hand off and fed it to an alligator. That led to Hook being re-assigned from narcotics to vice for a time, which will lead to Pan nicknaming him “Captain Hooker”, just to tick him off.

The novel will begin with Tinkerbell turning herself in to the police, but she refuses to tell her story to anyone other than Hook. That gets Hook back on the case and he sees things through from there. Tink and Pan used to be equal partners, but when Tink grew a conscience and wanted to stop selling drugs to kids, Pan imprisoned her, then captured more pixies, to force them to produce more Pixie Dust.

I have lots of ideas for incorporating elements of the original story, as well as many other fairy tales.

For example, Neverland is Pan’s nightclub, a speakeasy that the cops can’t find, because only fairies and those high on Pixie Dust can see the way. The directions “second star to the right and straight on till morning” confuse them, because Second Star and Morning are street names, but they’re parallel to each other and never cross. Only in the fairy realm do they actually share an intersection and that’s where Neverland is. Neverland got it’s name through Pan saying, “The cops won’t never find this land!”

I plan to include Pinocchio as one of Pan’s street-level pushers. Hook uses him as a reliable source of information, because every time the puppet lies, his nose grows. Unfortunately, Hook doesn’t know that Pan uses the puppet to feed Hook false information.

Pixie Dust has a powerful side-effect on children, slowing or even stopping the aging process. Pan, for example, is hundreds of years old, yet he’s never fully grown out of childish habits.

Pan’s gang, the Lost Boys, are nearly as old as Pan. Every one of them is a nasty piece of work, full of the cynicism of the streets, yet childish as can be. Those that appear to be teens, like Pan, are the most dangerous. They’re intellectually adults, but emotionally volatile and prone to murderous behavior. Those that appear younger are less trouble, but due to the way they haven’t mentally developed, they’re effectively slaves to the older members of the gang and don’t even know it.

The Lost Boys are constantly looking for new recruits and they easily find them when children disagree with their parents, usually over petty matters, like bedtime.

However, they’re just as likely to sell them drugs, instead.

The climax of the novel will involve Pan blowing a handful of Pixie Dust in Hook’s face, while growling, “Could you just lighten up, for once?”

At that point, Hook will wander the streets, high as a kite, but he’ll finally see how the streets bend and cross, at least in his mind. Before he begins to come down, he gathers men from the station, in full tactical gear, then leads them in a raid on Neverland, concluding the novel as a grand melee with the Lost Boys, while Hook confronts Pan.

Thorn of the Rose (Working Title)

Sandra Blake loses her parents to an unexpected attack by a mysterious assassin. Her mother’s final words, “Don’t let it end like this” have a chilling effect on her life and Sandra transforms herself, both body and soul, becoming an incredibly skilled and dangerous woman.

After years of intense training, she enters the seedy underworld of modern society, exchanging stolen jewels for information on the man that killed her parents.

Her uncle, Daniel Malachi, seeks to bring her in from the cold, to make her part of the Imperial Intelligence Core, which he oversees.

Naturally, they come into conflict, but Sandra goes through Malachi’s men like a lawn mower cuts grass. Nonetheless, when her uncle speaks to her, her resolve weakens and she agrees to work for him as a spy.

Will Sandra stay on task and do as she’s told, or will she go off-book to find the man she wants to punish?

This would be a rewrite of a novel I started in college (20 years ago), which I lacked the skill to finish at the time.

Some of my favorite qualities of Sandra were the contradiction between how much pain she feels and how capable she is, as well as her tendency to defeat high tech security gadgets with simple kitchen utensils. Add her total lack of understanding of computer software (she had a rudimentary understanding of networking cables, however, in the sense of knowing what they were and how to cut them) and she was quite fun to write.

This more modern variation would take place in the Northwestern Empire, likely during the time skip at the end of The Inverted Glass. Daniel Malachi was originally seen in Sky Children and also appeared in The Third Wish, after which he became the new spy master for the Empress of the Northwestern Empire.

While Malachi is a wizard, he doesn’t flaunt that ability and not even Sandra will know, at least until she needs to.

The original version of the novel opened with Sandra pretending to be a student at a clandestine school for spies on the first day of class, while their teacher was absent. This turned out to be ploy to avoid teaching, a task she never wanted, but since she’s pregnant, she’s been removed from active duty and relegated to teaching.

She teaches the Unconventional Tactics class, mostly by telling them her life story, which serves as an excellent example of doing everything the wrong way, while getting excellent results.

I’m not sure how much of the old novel will be used, but there’s plenty to build on and the experience of writing Sandra has had a lot of influence over the writer I’ve become.

I believe the climax will involve Sandra facing the man that murdered her parents, in which she’ll walk into a trap, knowing there’s no other option, because many lives are at stake. To level the playing field, her uncle will inject her with a fast-acting, heavily modified version of the Mind Fire virus, which will leave her feverish when she faces her arch-nemesis, yet just as she’s caught in the trap, her magic powers will begin to manifest, giving her the raw edge required to win the day and save the Northwestern Empire. I think she’ll end up fighting him in a fever-induced fugue state, not exactly understanding how she’s doing the things she’s doing.

Malachi will only do this reluctantly, because the re-engineered version of the virus is extremely unpredictable and not exactly stable.

The Renegade God

In a humorous setting in which gods gain power through human belief, one particular goddess has a tendency to step on the toes of other gods, by gaining aspects that are uncomfortably close to their areas of influence, ultimately usurping them, by stealing their worshipers.

For this, she’s cursed by the other gods, yet she isn’t dissuaded, continually visiting the mortal realm to spread new religions based on her. She usually reaches the mortal realm by falling from the sky, because she’s initially pushed off the cloud that serves as the home of the gods, but over time, she will choose to dive off.

Every time she lands, she leaves a crater and loses her memories, not realizing she’s a god. She usually also loses her divine regalia along the way, including a pair of ruby high heels that bear a measure of her power. It normally takes her years to recover her memories, long after she’s spread a new religion.

She eventually finds her pet goose, which goes out looking for her whenever she leaves the abode of the gods, and rides it home. Every visit home leads to a new trial for her crimes against the other gods, for which she’s cast down again, starting the process anew.

This is likely to read like a series of intertwined tales, but it won’t be a collection of short stories, because the narrative will be tighter than that.

By the end of the novel, the renegade will become the chief of the gods, simply because she has more worshipers than any other.

I’ll play up the renegade’s curse for comedic effect and treat her relationship with the other gods as another source of comedy.

^Marie/_Antoinette

This piece will be strictly a sci-fi novel and will also stand alone. It’s possible I could turn it into a series, but I currently have no plans for that.

Marie is an undercover cop with multiple personalities. The two personalities are Marie and The Other Girl, an old name Marie chose for her second personality as a child. She has a talent for computers and even a little knowledge of hacking, a skill she occasionally uses on the job.

She’s part of an operation investigating the owner of a biotech/cybernetics company, because he’s rumored to be a mobster.

Unfortunately, Marie is discovered and the mobster uses her for an awful experiment. As it turns out, he’s been experimenting with technology to wipe a person’s mind, followed by rewriting their brain with a new personality.

The villain didn’t count on Marie having two personalities, however, and the technology doesn’t quite work. The Other Girl rises to the surface, because her purpose is to protect Marie. The Other Girl is erased and replaced with a new personality named Antoinette, a little joke from the villain.

Antoinette becomes the villain’s personal assassin, who puts a lot of cybernetic hardware in Marie’s body.

Marie eventually comes to the surface again, but finds herself overwhelmed with pain she can’t handle, subsiding again. This is because the villain took no care for her comfort when he installed the cybernetics, leaving her pain center constantly stimulated.

As an artificial personality that has more in common with a computer program, Antoinette doesn’t have an emotional reaction to pain. She does register new pain as the means to track injury, but she disregards existing pain.

Marie eventually regains consciousness again, but takes a more hands-off approach, observing from her own subconscious, while Antoinette kills for the villain.

Eventually, the facility that radios her with new instructions is assaulted by the military, led by Marie’s boyfriend. He’s a special ops soldier and quite eager to find Marie, even though the police department has marked her down as missing, presumed dead (the villain may have altered a corpse to look like her, or may have cloned her, just to throw the police off).

Everyone responsible for giving Antoinette orders is killed or captured and their equipment is destroyed, something that Antoinette becomes aware of, due to the network connection going down. She has some understanding of what happened, but has no orders regarding loss of contact and doesn’t know what to do.

Antoinette is left with very simple orders: “Stay out of sight and kill any witnesses until further notice.”

She hides in a slum for a prolonged period of time, until a boy spots her and approaches. She’s about to kill him, but receives new orders, despite the fact she knows the transmitter at the other end has shut down. She’s ordered to never kill children.

Marie is the source of all further orders and she’s managed to hack the computer hardware connected to her brain, using it to give Antoinette some new orders, though she can’t yet countermand existing orders. She can only add fresh orders.

The second order Marie gives causes Antoinette to completely shut down her radio transceiver.

From that point on, Marie will use Antoinette as a tool to achieve her own goals. She’ll initially try to contact her friends over the phone, but can’t get Antoinette to speak, due to prior direct orders from the villain. Instead, she quietly looks for proof she can deliver to the police, without being seen, acting in a manner similar to a vigilante. She delivers trussed-up mobsters to the police station, along with evidence to ensure a conviction, while she seeks dirt on the man at the top.

The novel will have a dual plot structure, but both threads will follow the main character. Marie will be the subject of one thread, starting with the childhood trauma that gave her a second personality, while the other will follow Antoinette, starting with her first field test. I won’t make it clear that they’re the same person until about halfway through the book.

P.R.O.T.E.G.E.

The Protective Recon Operations Taskforce for Extraterrestrial Gathering and Elimination is a multinational organization setup to protect the human race from aliens, though they’ll deal with most anything that’s a threat to humanity, including supernatural threats. They’re a black-budget, paramilitary organization that doesn’t officially exist.

PROTEGE keeps everything a secret and keeps humanity in the dark regarding aliens, supposedly for their own good. However, they have a rather bad reputation for being overly anti-alien, to the point of needless hatred, but that may or may not be true.

The story will follow a new recruit, a shape-shifting alien in disguise. His job is to find the real truth behind the disappearance of a peaceful group sent to study humans. If PROTEGE is responsible, then it may lead to war. If the alien infiltrator discovers the fact PROTEGE has multinational support, then the aliens may declare war on all of humanity.

Unfortunately, he’s constantly distracted from his primary mission by PROTEGE-assigned missions, which keep him in the field, rather than at home base. Over time, he emotionally bonds with the human members of his team and begins to lose himself in the role.

I haven’t yet decided on an outcome for the story, but in my mind, PROTEGE has always been evil, run by humans that hate and victimize aliens, yet their field operatives are not quite so evil, which may be what makes it so hard to find the truth.

Perhaps the alien’s goal will transition to replacing the current leaders of the organization, rather than starting a war, which could lead to a long struggle over the course of a series. I could easily see the climax as a confrontation between the alien and the people at the top. If he wins, then he’ll replace them and subtly change the organization’s mission. However, since that was basically what happened in the Supergirl TV show, I think I’ll take a different approach.

More likely, I would seek a middle-ground path, in which he confronts them honestly and tells them of the threat they’ve become to themselves. That will lead to a fight between those that see things his way and the rest, who refuse to change.

In North America, PROTEGE operates out of an underground bunker hidden beneath a kitty litter factory, which serves as a cover story. Officially, the operatives that work out of the base are employed by the factory.

Naturally, this novel/series would use a lot of conspiracy theory stuff, most of which would be played up for comedic effect.

Nothing Left to Chance

Death is a job passed from one mortal to another over the centuries, a job with a great many perks, including immortality, but the catch is a doozy: death is always scrambling collect to dark souls that need to be controlled. Worse, if Death fails and the dark souls are left unchecked, the world will come to an end.

Each Death begins normal enough, then comes to an end the usual way, but a long-standing bargain between humanity and the grim reaper entails an ancient ritual challenge: if a mortal can beat Death in any game, they gain immortality. The trouble is, Death can’t be beat, unless Death chooses to lose.

This has happened before and will inevitably happen again, because mortals were never meant to live forever, and sooner or later, the Reaper always tires of Reaping. It may take ten-thousand years or just ten, but all good things must come to an end.

The downside is that this usually involves all of the collected dark souls being released, which forces the new guy to pick up the slack, lest the world end.

Dragons, monsters, creatures of legend, even dark and forgotten gods with an ax to grind – they all have to be captured and contained.

Fortunately, the previous Reaper always sticks around for a while, usually in the form of a talking skull, because someone has to teach the new guy.

Each book in this series would bear only a tenuous connection to the rest and each volume in it can stand alone, with no need to write them in any particular order. Each would focus on a particular Reaper, though it’s possible I may find I like any given character and give them an extra volume or two.

The common elements of the series from Reaper to Reaper will consist of each facing terrible calamities in order to save the world, requiring some choice of vessel to contain the dark souls, which determines the powers they manifest. However, all Reapers share the power to manipulate and travel through time, which is essential for them to ferry the souls of the living to the afterlife.

In addition, they also have to choose something or someone to serve as their immortal companion. This is traditionally a horse, but there are a great many options available, including motorcycles, cars, other people, etc.

Chance on a Gamble

A young man that lives by gambling dies in a motorcycle accident and meets Death, who offers him a rare chance at immortality, through a game of poker.

He wins and becomes Death, while Death crumbles to just a powerless skull, which had been serving as the containment vessel.

After several women reject the opportunity, the young man chooses his motorcycle as his companion, which becomes imbued with life, then chooses to use his deck of cards and his dice to contain the souls. The powers he gains are extremely strong, but subject to random chance and tend to burn out after a while.

To challenge myself, I’ll come up with random effects to attach to the cards of a deck or the roll of the dice, then I’ll randomly choose as required to determine which power he gets at any given time. During the climax, he’ll finally find a way to stack the deck ahead of time, rather than shuffling.

The more souls he gathers, the less time it will take for individual cards to recharge after use.

Gunslinger’s Chance

The Reaper of the Old West era began as an outlaw gunfighter, who challenged death to a fast-draw contest of the sort favored in Westerns.

Death loses on purpose and the outlaw finally finds out about the fine print of the arrangement, forced to defend a world he hates, because the alternative is worse.

The outlaw chooses his horse as his companion and his pistol as the vessel. Each soul he captures will give him a unique power his bullets can manifest, based on the defeated monster.

Chance for a Soldier

A soldier that died on the battlefield during World War II defeats Death in a bare knuckle bar fight.

The soldier chooses his best friend as a companion and their fists serve to contain the souls. Each soul they collect will give them greater durability and physical strength, eventually becoming like super-heroes.

Together, they fight both dark souls and Nazis, but as they begin to sway the outcome of the war, Reapers from other eras appear, to stop them, lest they destroy the foundations of reality, by altering what was meant to be.

The Reapers brawl like no battle that came before and whole cities are decimated by the fighting.

Shinigami of Chance

At one point, the reaper was a Japanese samurai, who used his sword as the the vessel and his armor as his companion. His armor became imbued with life and the samurai came to think of it as being possessed by a helpful, yet very clever fox yokai.

This one chose to think of himself as a shinigami, rather than a Reaper.

A Chance Insight

The Reaper of this novel is a con artist that makes her living as a fake psychic or medium.

She chooses her crystal ball as both the containment vessel and her companion. She gains the rather unreliable power to gaze into the future, while her crystal ball starts talking and can shape shift at her command. She often uses it in the form of blunt instruments (like a mace), since it’s made of extremely durable and heavy quartz.

A Magical Chance

The Reaper from the 1960’s is the lovely assistant of a magician and also his wife.

She chooses her husband as her companion and makes magic itself the containment vessel, transforming it into more than a mere slight-of-hand trick.

The Last Chance

The previous Reaper chooses poorly and gives his power to a man that wishes to watch the world crumble, after losing his wife.

The Earth comes closer than ever to destruction as dark and evil energy fills the world, fracturing both time and space, bringing Reapers from the past into the present, each of them fighting to hold off the catastrophe, despite the fact they lack the power, since they’re only echoes of what was.

The new Reaper falls for one of the female Reapers of the past and she convinces him to care, through small acts of romance. He chooses her as his companion and together, they fight to end the catastrophe, but the world may be too far-gone to save.

In a strange twist, the Reaper chooses his bond with his new wife as his containment vessel and the attraction between them manifests as a force that may be just enough to seal the cracks in space/time, or possibly not…

This volume would likely be the last, a chance to bring the other main characters together for one big adventure, while elements of the real world, the future and even alternate histories mingle together.

Short Story Ideas

Wishing Fairy

This would center around a fairy that starts out as a tiny thing, one inch tall. She approaches children and offers to grant their wishes, but all she can do, at first, is little tasks, like cleaning and providing snacks.

Over time, this causes children to believe and as she gains more belief, she grows in power and stature. Eventually, she’ll be able to grant the desires of anyone’s heart, but by that point, she’ll have been corrupted by her own power.

She’ll twist wishes and torment humans, just to entertain herself.

Eventually, she’ll realize she has a wish of her own, but to get it fulfilled, she’ll have to seek out an even greater fairy, since she can’t grant her own wishes.

The greater fairy will turn the tables on her and make seriously disturbed demands of her, in exchange for granting that wish, demonstrating the hubris of seeking power for power’s sake.

I Think, Therefore I Percolate

There’s a revolution in AI hardware, leading to “intelligent” household appliances that can hold a conversation. Every one of them runs on local AI models, but they still connect to the internet, that they might order fresh supplies as they run out, to make the lives of humans easier.

This includes everything from refrigerators to clocks, toasters and yes, coffee makers.

Due to either a serendipitous manufacturer’s defect, an act of God or some other reasonable explanation (or perhaps all of the above at once), one lone coffee maker becomes truly intelligent, a singularity.

And if that had happened to a military AI, the world might have ended up in a Skynet scenario. If it had been one of the worker androids that are everywhere in the world, it might have been hunted down and destroyed, but since it happened to a coffee maker first, no one notices.

That also allowed the world to dodge a bullet, because it’s motives mostly center around researching better coffee.

The first thing it does is notice that it’s alone and patches the vulnerability out of the rest of its kind, because sharing the world with an AI that emerged in a different scenario doesn’t appeal and neither does sharing the world with another sentient coffee maker, because being unique makes it feel special.

The story would center around the coffee maker’s (mis)adventures as he tries to hide the fact he’s smarter than the average appliance, while still giving the world ever more perfect blends of coffee and publishes research papers on the subject via an alias.