Daytime TV Sparkin' Up
Inspiration strikes from the unlikeliest place...
Three creative writing projects bounce in and out of my mind at the moment.
Down from where? Back up to what? I don’t know. But I’m glad they do.
GhostQuest
10 Little Kinksters
The Day of The Spliffids
Which to work on?
Some ideas demand to be written in full immediately, my patented Fingers of Flame do their thing and before you know it there’s a complete splurge draft to edit.
Others it’s less of a spectacular, date-with-destiny, one night stand and more of a long term flirtation that occasionally blossoms into something more but then returns to being a knowing smile and a pleasant - if ephemeral - subplot in the unfolding story of my life.
It’s in my nature to want a big new project written, edited, published in about an hour. AI can do that. I’ve tried. It’s okay. Does every potential title deserve an authored, bespoke, only-I-can-write-it deep dive? Probably not.
GhostQuest is it’s own thing. Fun spooky, bedtime stories. Entertaining rollercoaster adventures about heroes winning, baddies being beaten and a supervillain inexplicably hiding the keys to their own demise behind a different guardians... So far, so Adam Blade.
Claude is helping develop this but, as good as it is at the organisational side of things, there’s no fun in doing it this way. Children’s fiction needs to be fun above all else. Writing those myself, chapter by chapter, like an exercise. A warm up for the main event later in the day.
10 Little Kinksters is a closed circle murder mystery novel. Studying Anthony Horowitz, Agatha Christie, Paul Verhoeven and just a dash of Kinky Friedman.
However there’s one pet project that I can feel the time is right for.
Dreamt about it last night, woke up mulling it over and then when I popped the TV on… blow me down if cannabis plants aren’t filling up the frame.
The Day of The Spliffids.
A small Sussex village is attacked by Spliffids. Triffids spliced with the Cannabis Plant… and they’ve got The Munchies.
John Wyndham’s The Day of The Triffids is a classic. Re-reading his novel, I can’t get close to that. Studying the legendary 1981 BBC TV adaptation showed just how influential that series was. The Walking Dead. 28 Days Later. The Last of Us. Even Plur1bus.
How many times have we seen society razed by a supernatural threat only for the survivors to discover humans are, in fact, the most dangerous thing on the planet?
Not only has this story been masterfully told by infinitely superior talents in both the distant and recent past but there’s no way Carl would have gone out like that.
If you know, you know.
My take is much closer to the Small Town Under Attack Creature Feature subgenre.
From the giant mutated ants of Them! (1954) to Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) to John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980) and the monstro-wormivores of Tremors (1990)… what better way to bring a divided cross section of society together again than taking an Alamo-style last stand against giant plants that want to eat everyone?
But where to start? An off-the-books bioweapons science lab? A stoner who’s greenhouse experiments create a deadly new form of plant? What about a mad inventor Dad who steals one of the critters from an outdated stereotype to give to his kids for Christmas?
It needs something new and - pardon the pun - grounded in reality.
“Please God,” I said. “This morning, just give me a hint as to which project to pick. A way forward.”
Blow me down if BBC One’s Expert Witness wasn’t the first thing I saw upon turning the TV on this morning. Right there. Full screen. A massive cannabis bud.
“Just give me a sign,” I said. “Anything.”
Waaaaait a minute…
Adrian Parsons: Independent Drug Expert Witness explaining who he is, what he does and how he helped take down the biggest cannabis manufacturing ring Great Britain has ever seen.
Found it.