Launched: My new author blog!

Hey everybody! I know it’s been months, but I just started my brand new author blog, and I’m doing the A to Z challenge over there this year. Find it at http://chriskelworth.com/blog/

Z is for Zebra in the Zany Zoo

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas…

This seems like a kids’ book. So we’ve got a zebra in a zoo. I’m not sure if he was born in the zoo, or maybe captured by somebody and brought to the zoo because his natural habitat was threatened. Anyway…

This zoo is much weirder than your usual zoo. There are animals there like nothing Zebra has ever heard of. Quite possibly the people stay still but the animals get to wander around all over the place, which will let Zebra explore and meet lots of the other animals. And maybe there are other zany things that the animals or the zookeepers do.

If you’re interested enough to pick this up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

Thanks for visiting!

BTW, forgot to mention this yesterday, but I reached my goals for Camp Nanowrimo! The first draft of “The Gnomes are Missing” is finished, and my final word count was over 45k.

Y is for a Year of Youth

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas…

This would have to be fantasy magic, I think. Somebody gets a year to leave old age behind and become young (and beautiful) again, but once the year is up, that’s it, they won’t get a chance again. Who wants this and why? How do they pick which year?

Maybe it isn’t for one particular person, but a land where everybody gets a year of youth, assuming that they live long enough to grow out of their natural youth. How would that change people’s opinions about aging? Would they still think that youth was wasted on the young?

If you’re interested enough to pick this up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

Thanks for visiting!

X is for the Xeroxxing Xylophone

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas…

Okay, so it’s a magic xylophone, right? When you play the right song on it, you can conjure an exact physical copy of something you’ve already got; even copies of people or animals.

What more do you want from me? You realize that we’re into the slums of the alphabet now right? 😉

 

If you’re interested enough to pick this up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

Thanks for visiting!

W is for Wizard and Witch Wedding

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas…

Pretty simple idea here; a wizard and a witch are getting married. The trouble with a wedding story is usually introducing enough conflict, so maybe there are old traditions that witches or wizards aren’t supposed to get married (or to marry each other,) that the bride and groom have decided to break. Probably both families have their own notions of the kinds of magic that should surround a wedding day, and the spells start to interfere with each other.

Maybe one or the other actually doesn’t want to get married, but they’re being forced into it.

If you’re interested enough to pick this up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

Thanks for visiting!

V is for Virus

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas…

I’ve been thinking about this since a story came through the Team Ambitious critique group about getting magic powers from a virus. (Written by the incomparable Wendy Lambert.) Since reading it, I’ve been starting to wonder what you could do with beneficial viruses and super-powers from a harder sci-fi angle.

Viruses are pretty much the whole mystery of DNA after all, wrapped up in a pretty little protein sheath. Could you have a virus that makes somebody change shape? Heal wounds quicker? A virus that could spread to other people and heal them? What other remarkable abilities could you get from a virus?

If you’re interested enough to pick this up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

Thanks for visiting!

U is for Uploading to Virtual Worlds

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas…

I love the idea of the singularity and being able to ‘upload’ a human brain and body from biological reality into a computer core that can run them better. I’ve been noodling on a notion that combines that with alien visitation…

So, an alien starship shows up and makes contact with Earth, but it’s really just a robot drone with a gigantic computer core. Inside the computer are billions of uploaded personality from millions of different species. They travel through the galaxy on their computer ship, effectively immortal, and able to ‘explore’ millions upon millions of virtual planets any time they want, some based on real worlds that the starship or similar ones have visited, some entirely made up.

The ship and its digital citizens want to spend a hundred years or so studying the Earth to add it to their library. If we’re interested, they also offer to upload anybody who wants the digital life and take them along. But a few people start to wonder if the aliens are really able to upload Earthlings without running into a few mistakes as they work out the process…

If you’re interested enough to pick this up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

Thanks for visiting!

T is for Twilight Treasure Hunt (and Tolkien)

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas…

No, not the kind of twilight with sparkly vampires. I wonder how long they’re going to be associated with that word. 😉

This is another kinda thin notion that makes me think of a favorite book, but I came across those words on my Sweet Spot Map list and thought of a treasure hunt (or the search for a Macguffin,) where you have to be at the right spot for twilight, during the transition from day into night, to find the magic path to continue onward. Tolkien used ‘the setting sun with the last light’, but it’s a very similar idea. (And yes, The Hobbit is largely a treasure hunt of sorts.)

If you’re interested enough to pick this up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

Thanks for visiting!

S is for Scavenge like it’s the zombie apocalypse

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas…

“Scavenge like it’s the zombie apocalypse.”

I wrote that down fairly early in my A-Z planning, and if there was anything more that it meant, any characters or coherent plot, I’ve forgotten about them. It’s a cool sounding phrase, though, isn’t it?

Presumably, in the story, it’s not actually the zombie apocalypse, but somebody’s scavenging as if it were. Is it some other kind of apocalypse, or a reality tv show? Is the scavenging character just crazy?

If you’re interested enough to pick this up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

Thanks for visiting!

R is for Rainbow Rider

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas…

I know that this concept was used offhand in the Xanth series (specifically ‘Centaur Aisle’,) but I love the idea of a fantasy character who can get from place to place by climbing onto a rainbow and riding it. How does he (or she) catch up to the rainbow and touch it? Where does it take the riders? Obviously this would have to be a very magical realm, where not much science is operative.

If you’re interested enough to pick this up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

Thanks for visiting!