Category: 14A

Patient Zero

I told myself I’d never write about Zombies, Vampires, or Werewolves. And then I watched World War Z and thought… “that would be so much fun!”

But I couldn’t do supernatural Zombies… so I made a different kind of Zombie. A Zombie that died after 2 weeks. And then I thought – it must have been an intentionally spread disease… and that gave me the opportunity to reinstate the psychopathic group “the Sanctified.” This group appears in a few of my stories so it was great to work them in and almost show an origin story.

To read Patient Zero, click HERE

James Cooper: The Painter

I was sixteen when this story came to life. I remember going to work, thinking all day about this story, and then coming home and writing down the plot outline. Inspired by so many crime dramas out there, The Painter is one of my favourites as its story starts off small but grows into something so large it carries on decades later and on into World War Four!

The cast was originally James Conners, Agent Wing, and Bridgette. Renamed to James Cooper, Agent Ward, and Breanna. I picked up the story years later and decided to rebrand the bunch.

I struggled with this story a lot as its ending was incredibly, incredibly disappointing to me. But… that’s how life goes sometimes. And I’ll admit, I may be the author but that does not mean I have the authority to change how a story develops. All of my stories grow on their own… I just write them down and hope my favourite characters get to live!

To read James Cooper: The Painter, click HERE

For As Long As I Can’t Remember

Where do I even begin with this one?

As a writer, this is one of my favourite stories. Not for the content or the writing style… but for the journey.

In about 2013 I set out to write a story inspired simply by the phrase: “for as long as I can’t remember.” I had never heard the phrase before, I had just thought of it one day and figured it’d make a fun amnesia story.

I randomly picked the year 1905 because I wanted to do an older story. I decided to have these two brothers, Harry and Mack (Mackenzie after my own middle name), travel across the US starting from the West Coast. I figured they’d end up in New York and eventually get stopped by the detective that was chasing them: Devante.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

And they did… I just couldn’t really figure out why or how but I knew they’d get stopped in New York. I wanted Harry to die and have Mack go to jail for murder. This would allow the narrator to write in his journal a frustrated memoir about how Harry will always be remembered as a criminal for as long as he couldn’t remember.

And then I started digging around in what happened in 1905 and discovered the tragic event that breathed life into this story. The very first elevated train derailment in recorded North American history. It happened on September 11th, 1905. This was obviously really intriguing due to the date. I kept digging and digging and found that 13 people died. But one of them couldn’t be identified. Harry?

For some reason, the motorman, Paul Kelly, decided to take a turn going three times the speed he should. We don’t know why. Perhaps because Devante paid him? And when the crash was through, Kelly ran off! Why? Perhaps because he had intentionally done this. They found Kelly two years later.

The tragic event filled all the gaps in my story. Did you know I had benched it for a long time because I couldn’t figure things out? This event made it all make sense. You’d almost guess I had known about the event before I began conceiving the story!

It took a long, long time to find all the names of those who perished in the crash. And I was thrilled when I did because I wanted to dedicate the story to them.

James Cooper: The Painter was originally James Conners: The Painter. I changed the name to Cooper after learning about a mid-forties man on the train who was beheaded. His name was James Cooper and he was a Painter. I’m not making this up! It seemed only right to rename my murder mystery character to James Cooper as the change was so subtle and meant a lot to me.

To read For As Long As I Can’t Remember, click HERE

Elkadesh

This story has taken a lot of re-writing and plot-changing to get just write. It’s about time travel, alternate realities and butterfly effects. I’ve been working on the sequence of scenes for many years in order to get them just write.

This story was inspired by the concept that Tolkien sort of put forth. When the Age of Man began, perhaps they could develop out of a world with dragons and glowing-fireball-eyes and into paved roads, airplanes, and Snapchat. Perhaps… but the only way to find out is to travel back in time and with the help of… nope. I can’t tell you what the stone really is just yet. But Flygue Sootna knows.

To read Elkadesh, click HERE

A Space Pirate’s Life For Me

My best friend, Ben Ward (who moonlights as Michael Draw) shared a story he was working on about a Sci-Fi pair of kids on a junkyard planet working as slave-orphans for a Madame Zolan. One of the kids’ parents were killed by space pirates and almost immediately after reading about that my mind began racing. I knew it’d be so much fun to write a story about space pirates!

And it was/is! The best part… Nax. This is hands down one of my favourite characters. He’s spicy, witty, adventurous, and cockroach-like annoying: the crew can’t get rid of him! He’s got a secret that disappoints even me, though! I guess that’s the downside to letting my imagination write stories instead of my own will.

I am debating stretching this story into another series of stories. I’d use this as a back story for a whole realm of space piracy! But I may just cut it short (after the second episode) and leave the rest up for imagination. We’ll see.

To read A Space Pirate’s Life For Me, click HERE