The Imperfect Gentleman. Is it an etiquette manual, a romance, a cozy mystery, an ironic and detached personal memoir, or a character study?
Harmed and Dangerous. Obviously, a revenge flick.
Brief Lies. Have I done this one before? I think it's the perfect title for a short story collection.
The Goddess of the Machine. Science fiction. Probably dystopian.
Tube Full of Cats. A social history of the internet.
Midnight at the House of Thieves. Sword and sorcery. Heavily influenced by the author's D&D game. And I mean old-school, not this 4E crap, whippersnappers!
Whippersnappers vs. Geezers, Film at Eleven. A rollicking comedy of the eternal generation gap. And don't try telling me the generation gap is a modern invention! There's a Sumerian tablet in which a parent is grousing about how kids today don't want to work hard and all his son ever does is hang out on the corner with his hoodlum friends.
Bootlegged Heart. A romance, set in 1920s middle America, or the modern knock-off designer label market, or a near-future science fiction milieu centering on e-piracy and the ramifications of intellectual property. Or all three, if you do a generational saga and pluralize the title.
Knight of the Living Dead. In which the zombies field a champion.
Escape from Loopland. Starts out like one of those bleak suburban mainstream novels full of alienated characters. I never read the things. But somebody must like them. You know, lots of adultery and drinking and so on. But then the protagonist decides to be daring and actually go downtown, get out of her damn car, and walk around, discovering a whole new, vibrant world like nothing she ever knew existed.
Some great ideas there. If these are the ones you're giving away, I'd love to see what you're keeping to yourself!
ReplyDeleteI don't actually keep them to myself. The ones I'm invested enough to work on, I try to share through publication. (So you can see a dozen of them by tracking down the books.) The publication process - even self-publishing - is much, much harder than the writing process, which in turn is harder than the idea generation process.
ReplyDeleteYou can do this just as well as I can. It's only a habit. Ideas are easy. Execution is another matter. If I can convince a few people of this fundamental truth, and free them up to act on it, I will not have blogged in vain.