The Mind Boggles

Before I begin, can we just confirm that we've established I'm insane? Okay? Good.

So, I was lying on my bed yesterday - as you do - and a weird thought came into my head. Why do I feel like I had a neglected childhood? I know I didn't! So, obvious conclusion must be that I had a past life as an orphan living in a horrible home where the walls were growing new things and the food was barely edible. That would explain my discomfort with mould and my unwillingness to try new foods. New foods might be barely edible. Like grey gloopy soup.

Of course, as I thought about this orphaned past life of mine, I began to feel quite sorry for the me that was dead. What had happened to my parents? How old was I in my memory of mouldy walls and gloopy grey food? Why was someone allowed to keep orphans essentially locked up in a building where the walls might eat them, given time?

Then, of course, the author in me decided it was going to go crazy, and I've come up with an idea for what I think will be a series of short stories that can be read individually without any prior knowledge of the others, except for the last one. I incorporated ideas I'd gotten through the day yesterday (as I wandered almost aimlessly throughout town waiting for the time when I would meet up with a friend for delicious noms and catch up on all sorts of stuff). So, now I have a series of stories going through my head, no time to write them, and only the main character's name to go by - it's in the title of the series. I will not be revealing it.

Of course, this all seems a bit all over the place until I tell you that the stories are past-lives in themselves. Hence the connection between orphaned me with the mouldy bedroom walls and the main character of my story. I do intend to write these stories - maybe throughout my college year - and have friends read them, but for now they remain a maddening idea of fantastical proportions. I have no idea how many stories there will be, who any of the other characters will be, or what sort of adventures my protagonist will get dragged in to in his various lives. I only know why it's all significant, and maybe, just maybe, this will turn from a series of short stories into a collected series of short stories that functions as an erratic novel.

So, I can add this to the list of books I have to write... fantastic.

Thankfully, with this series of stories, I don't have to worry about one thing: time travel. As my character's past lives are all important for the series, having himself travel back into them would create certain paradoxes. It would drive him insane. Because he cannot, ever, be allowed to see himself. The memory of it would rip his mind apart. (And that's why people who remember their past lives in fiction or - ha - in reality, should not be allowed to time travel. Nevermind the space-time continuum, they wouldn't survive the ordeal of viewing themselves! Most people wouldn't, anyway!)

Okay, enough teasers for a series that hasn't even been started. Tomorrow I'll have a new review. And next Wednesday, too. I come prepared this time. I've read ahead. Which is just as well, because I am currently reading several books, all of which are too long to finish soon while also writing. So many stories going through my head at the moment... YOU ARE TEARING ME APART LISA!*

*This is a thing we've picked up in college. To understand it, see this video.

P.S. if any of my friends/relations would like to design cover art** for any of my books/stories, please get in touch via Facebook/Twitter/email/age-old-device-called-a-phone. I have a mixture of commercial fiction (i.e. nothing too strange), science fiction and fantasy... and at some stage horror. I'll obviously let you read the story first... (Rude not to...)

** or photography, if it's not just a plain ol' photograph I could have taken myself...