Instructions for Strange Desires
It's a good sign when I'm commuting and writing
It’s always a good sign when I’m driving to work and writing. I wrote an entire novel in my head, planned it all out, during a three-hour drive years ago. The commute is much shorter, but with the right music and the brain back in “drive”, I start writing. Away from everything, when the world is locked out and it’s just me and road.
Instructions for Strange Desires reappeared today in my head.
Instructions for Strange Desires is a collection of short stories planned for 2024 that leaves the mundane world behind — think fantastical worlds, odd scenarios, erotic encounters, and the most bizarre scenarios imaginable as unsuspecting tourists of worlds upon worlds encounter a sinister, sentient tome that sucks them into its pages and pits them against all manner of terrors, trials and temptations.
It all comes together towards the end, as the characters realize they’re not story characters after all, but real people trapped in a maze of wonder. How will they escape? And will they even want to?
I had to give the idea a break for a bit while I wrapped up some other writing projects, but today, this project bullied its way to the front of my brain and would not be denied. In that twenty-or-so minutes of my commute, I worked through the opening story that sets the scene and introduces the manual, the dusty old tome, the magical portal to a host of realms. A book. It’s simply a book. Or rather, it’s more than a book. It’s a book that’s writing itself, and if you dare to read it, you may find yourself literally traversing its pages.
As soon as I got to work, I had to sit down and write up my notes for the opening scene, the characters — Elena, Jaxon and Seraph — on the run after stealing something. A darkened doorway beckons and gets them off the streets into a shadowy old library overflowing with books, artifacts, and arcane items of unknown origin. What our heroes need, if we can call them that, is an escape, a place to hide out from the city guard, a little out-of-the-way place they cannot be found. And the decrepit old custodian is only too happy to help them.
Another story I had to write down after it formed when I parked this morning was about a red desert and the end of a tribe, the last day of the tribal chief before he’s brought before the great queen and becomes her consort.
The last one I’m jotting down notes for tonight is a little story of sacrifice. A forest people sacrifice their daughters to a swamp creature, and a young woman learns that nothing her people believe about their god is true.
I have a few other ideas; not all are dark fantasy or the like. There will be science fiction stories, erotic tales in far-off worlds and fantastic lands, portals to the unknown, a trip to the zoo, a vampire’s castle, a clockwork army, and a nuclear detonation that destroys everything except an old inn by the side of a two-lane highway. Oh, and monsters, some of them terrifying and others that look just like you.
And in the midst of it all, Elena, Jaxon and Seraph, and a host of other characters, creatures, and castoffs. Maybe they get home. Maybe they don’t. We’ll find out on Medium, here on Substack and on my website, and hopefully by the end of the year, in a book of short stories, entitled “Instructions for Strange Desires”.
