“2020 Visions” was a story idea I came up with while doing a bunch of psychic and paranormal research for another story. Like its title hints, it deals with hindsight…

In the future, police investigations benefit from the use of a new technology that allows them to download the sensory information from a person’s short term memory. Detectives can then experience everything a witness hears, sees, feels, smells, or tastes throughout the length of that individual’s short term memory. But one detective finds himself addicted to this sensory immersion. The rest of his life unravels, so he throws himself into his work. But one day while on the trail of a murderer, his world gets turned inside-out when his sole witness is an insane woman that can only see the future.

Research required: dynamics between sensory and short term memory; psychological disorder an “always on” precog could be misdiagnosed as having; other science and tech advances for the year 2020; legal ramifications of downloading a willing witness’ sensory memories

Every now and then, I like to read through the section of my journal I call my “thought bucket.” The thought bucket is where I write up story ideas I come up with. I usually start out the day jotting down a story idea or two… as kind of a cleansing ritual to clear those thoughts out of my mind and allow me to focus on the projects I’m currently working on. I’ve been doing this for nearly three years now, and I realized I had over 200 story ideas in there (that I’m not currently working on). Even if I crank out four novels/screenplays/graphic novels a year, it would take me over 50 years to get through the current list (and if I keep jotting down ideas, I’d have another 3000 story ideas collected in that time).

So, I thought I’d share some of my crazy ideas every now-and-then… kind of a look into my brain (it’s a scary place… I know ’cause I peeked one time). So, let’s look at an idea I had a couple years ago (actually came up with the idea on my way home from work and wrote it down the next morning). I tentatively titled this concept, “Taco Assassins.”

Various costumed food mascots, waving the crowds into restaurants around the world, turn out to be a secret society of trained killers.

Taco by day, one man deals with the onslaught of the fast food experience–impatient customers, bratty children, and steaming inside his costume as the sun beats down on him all day long. It’s almost enough to make a man feel like killing someone. And now, he gets his chance. While filling in at another store, our hero gets pulled into this secret society of fast food garbed assassins when they mistake him for the regular employee of this store. He could just walk away now, but there are two important things making him take a shot at this whole assassin thing… he’s afraid of pissing off a group of assassins, and the money is good. Now, he must kill or be killed… and get back to work before the lunchtime rush ends.

Been working on a number of different things for the website lately and thought I’d give everyone a quick update (and I needed to jot down some of the different things I’m working on).

• New comic project in progress. Seth and I are on track for a summer release (it’s just a one-shot, and we’ll probably stick to an online POD release for now). I’m working on a section for it with 5-page preview, some additional background information on the book, and some other extras. Some of you might have already seen some sketches and a sample page from it… the rest of you will get a look when that new section goes live.

• An article for The Comicaze Report has taken on a life of its own and evolved into a major development project on my part. And I’ve been having lots of fun with it… but it looks like I’ll be working on it for another few months. The coding will be done sooner than that, but for it to be truly effective, I’ll need to do a ton of research on almost every major comic book character out there (and input all that data as well). Yes, major comic characters (some of which have a rogue’s gallery that stretches on for days). Because of this, the Comicaze Report updates have been pretty light.

One idea I had was to switch to kind of a Daily Show quick news rundown format (taking actual comic news articles from that week and add some fun comments or view them in a different light) until I get this other project done. I’ll also work on some comedic convention recaps this summer that I’ll post in the Comicaze Report section. Might even bring my good camera with me to give me that suave Peter Parker/Jimmy Olsen ace photographer look… the look that kept me mostly dateless in my high school days when I was a photographer for the yearbook.

• Slowly working on fleshing out more of the Brat-halla and Spook’d sections. Seth’s gonna be working on some more artwork for these sections when he gets the time, and I’ll… well, I’ll be writing them up as usual.

• Would anyone be interested in a lo-bandwith version of some of the Brat-halla or Spook’d webcomics? Something that would be more standard modem-user friendly. I’d probably split them up either by row or by panel. When I get some of this other stuff out of the way, I might set up a couple pages as an experiment and see what kind of response I get.

• Sketches from Seth. Working with him to set up an area in his bio page that will show the most recent sketch/illustration he posted out at his Photobucket account.

• Working on getting more of my published work scanned in or converted for web viewing for the “published” section (gives everyone some extra reading).

• Can’t really load any new scripts at the moment. Something changed on the server a while back (a perl upgrade I believe), and my script loading program hasn’t worked since. I’ve been trying to track down the problem, but I’m pretty close to just trashing it and writing a new script loading interface.

Yeah, that’s a lot of stuff. There’s also some other projects I need to get done, but one of them I’m putting off for another couple months because it’s going to be painful to do (but worth it). And after a lot of this stuff gets done, I’ll have a bunch more free time… time I plan on using to add more articles, 3×3x3 scripts, and prose short stories to the site. You’ll start seeing some of these show up in the next week or two, but most will be over the next few months.

This week, I discuss the last exercise dealing with opposites… and sneak in some talk about eating. Plus, I introduce the next exercise dealing with anniversaries.

For those of you that stopped by the site yesterday afternoon and evening, you might have noticed something different about the website.

Something like… no website.

The server my site’s hosted on crashed and left me stranded without email and left you stranded with no site to visit. Luckily, it got fixed with no loss of data, and everything seems to be running okay. Now, for a few quick thoughts (some I meant to post yesterday):

• Still recovering from my surgery, but doing much better. Tapering off from the meds the doc prescribed, so I’m not dozing off whenever I try to click past the Lifetime channel, Oxygen channel (except when Ellen’s on), or infomercials. Throat still hurts (still have some stiches in there, too), but it looks like my sleep apnea is no more. And I’ve lost over 12 pounds since the surgery.

• MTV has an article on adapting comics to film. Makes for an interesting little read.

• Burritos as big as yo face. Mmm-mmmm. These are tasty. Used to be able to eat a whole one, but my stomach seems to have shrunk after my surgery (I could only get half of one of these monster burritos down at lunch today).

• They rearranged the column schedule over at Scryptic Studios, so starting June 6th, the The Art of Words (featuring the Scryptic Dojo activities) will be moving to an every Monday schedule. If you want to sharpen your skills at writing or just want to stimulate your creativity, stop on by and give the exercises a shot. Think mind expanding… thought provoking… without the nasty hangover or withdrawal symptoms.

• Comicaze Report… returns tomorrow! Gotta get a script finished and off to Seth first, but I think I’ll be able to get it done (might not be up until tomorrow evening/night, but I’ll get it up there tomorrow).

• News on new projects from Steve Niles. Love the Giant Monster cover, and being a wolf fan, I can’t wait to see Niles’ take on werewolves. Looks like some fun stuff.

Now, back to writing (as long as the blog still works).