I’ve got a new story idea! Well, novel, really. It’s five stories combined. Several of these have been bouncing around in my head for a while now, but I just now realized they would melt together to form a really cool book. It’s called RIFF, but the last F on the cover would look like the top line was added later, so it used to be RIFT. It’s a play on words – I’ve heard the technique can be quite effective.
And if you steal my idea, I’ll bite your nose off. Or something equally as painful.
This is what I know so far. There are five separate storylines that weave in and out of each other occasionally. This means seven main characters. I know I know! Jaime, stop writing so many frickin' characters! But they're not all in the same scenes, I promise.
The story is apocalyptic, which is a theme I've been wanting to write about for a while now. Here are the five stories:
1. There is a special guitar riff where if played wrong, will send your soul straight to Hell. But if it's played correctly, your soul will become the envy of every angel and demon, even God and Satan. Janek is a talented musician who takes it upon himself to tattoo the tabs on his body and learn the notes. When he gets the riff right, the world is sent into choas. The keepers of the earth lack in their duties to tend to the balance of the universe and focus their energy on winning Janek's soul.
2. Sara Jayne Preston is a rich girl who is in trouble because her father's enemies will use her as a hostage if they can just get their hands on her. He hires her a guardian to watch over her day and night. What she didn't realize is that her father's enemies aren't regular mortals, nor do they care about her father or his money. They are after Sara Jayne specifically, so when they have the chance, they rip her from this world where her guardian can't protect her. Little do they know the extent of Matthew Lace's loyalty to his word. When he finds Sara Jayne's suicide note, he knows it's been staged, and follows her into Hell to bring her home.
3. Wintry Charlse finds out that she has cancer and only has a year left to live. The day she recieves this news, she meets Leonard. At first it appears to be a friendship built out of his sympathy for her condition, but later she discovers he has been her guardian angel her entire life. Before the year is up, Leonard is reassigned because it is against the rules for angels to fall in love with humans. Leonard breaks the rules to stay with Wintry, but is sent to to Hell for his disobedience. Wintry had been planning to live in Heaven with Leonard after the cancer had gotten the better of her, but now she sees no other choice but to plunge into Hell after her angel lover. But in his circle of Hell, Leonard meets a mortal named Matthew Lace and finds his faithfullness to Wintry challenged.
4. Detective Harold Truick is called to the scene of a very private crime scene, twelve stories off the ground. Scattered on the ledges of the buildings are smashed fruit reminants: apple cores, orange peels, etc. Among them is the body of a dead angel. Truick takes it upon himself to get to the bottom of this mystery, even if it means going to Heaven and interrogating the other angels in person, even if it means restoring the balance of the universe to sort out the suspicious death of the angel.
5. Enn gets premonitions. She's always considered it luck to know which side of the street to stand on when a car hits a lamppost or a mugger runs past. However, something stranger is happening just under the detection of the rest of the human race. She picks up strange clues and omens from the weather, animals, and vibes of her fellow humans. She suspects the world is coming to an end, and when order is hanged, she comes to grips with her identity as a character and breaks the conventions of a novel, threatening to break right out of the pages.
And that's all you get for now. I definitely have a feeling I'm ripping off things that have been done before, but I swear I think of these references after I've come up with my ideas. So let me just plug a few things real quick. Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries. An episode of Strange Frequency. Dante's Inferno (of The Divine Comedy). And so on.
On a completely unrelated note, I am excited to see Neil Gaiman's new movie STARDUST in August. It has goats in it.
And if you steal my idea, I’ll bite your nose off. Or something equally as painful.
This is what I know so far. There are five separate storylines that weave in and out of each other occasionally. This means seven main characters. I know I know! Jaime, stop writing so many frickin' characters! But they're not all in the same scenes, I promise.
The story is apocalyptic, which is a theme I've been wanting to write about for a while now. Here are the five stories:
1. There is a special guitar riff where if played wrong, will send your soul straight to Hell. But if it's played correctly, your soul will become the envy of every angel and demon, even God and Satan. Janek is a talented musician who takes it upon himself to tattoo the tabs on his body and learn the notes. When he gets the riff right, the world is sent into choas. The keepers of the earth lack in their duties to tend to the balance of the universe and focus their energy on winning Janek's soul.
2. Sara Jayne Preston is a rich girl who is in trouble because her father's enemies will use her as a hostage if they can just get their hands on her. He hires her a guardian to watch over her day and night. What she didn't realize is that her father's enemies aren't regular mortals, nor do they care about her father or his money. They are after Sara Jayne specifically, so when they have the chance, they rip her from this world where her guardian can't protect her. Little do they know the extent of Matthew Lace's loyalty to his word. When he finds Sara Jayne's suicide note, he knows it's been staged, and follows her into Hell to bring her home.
3. Wintry Charlse finds out that she has cancer and only has a year left to live. The day she recieves this news, she meets Leonard. At first it appears to be a friendship built out of his sympathy for her condition, but later she discovers he has been her guardian angel her entire life. Before the year is up, Leonard is reassigned because it is against the rules for angels to fall in love with humans. Leonard breaks the rules to stay with Wintry, but is sent to to Hell for his disobedience. Wintry had been planning to live in Heaven with Leonard after the cancer had gotten the better of her, but now she sees no other choice but to plunge into Hell after her angel lover. But in his circle of Hell, Leonard meets a mortal named Matthew Lace and finds his faithfullness to Wintry challenged.
4. Detective Harold Truick is called to the scene of a very private crime scene, twelve stories off the ground. Scattered on the ledges of the buildings are smashed fruit reminants: apple cores, orange peels, etc. Among them is the body of a dead angel. Truick takes it upon himself to get to the bottom of this mystery, even if it means going to Heaven and interrogating the other angels in person, even if it means restoring the balance of the universe to sort out the suspicious death of the angel.
5. Enn gets premonitions. She's always considered it luck to know which side of the street to stand on when a car hits a lamppost or a mugger runs past. However, something stranger is happening just under the detection of the rest of the human race. She picks up strange clues and omens from the weather, animals, and vibes of her fellow humans. She suspects the world is coming to an end, and when order is hanged, she comes to grips with her identity as a character and breaks the conventions of a novel, threatening to break right out of the pages.
And that's all you get for now. I definitely have a feeling I'm ripping off things that have been done before, but I swear I think of these references after I've come up with my ideas. So let me just plug a few things real quick. Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries. An episode of Strange Frequency. Dante's Inferno (of The Divine Comedy). And so on.
On a completely unrelated note, I am excited to see Neil Gaiman's new movie STARDUST in August. It has goats in it.
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