Cellulose backups

These are the original handwritten drafts for “On the Use of Shape-Shifters in Warfare” (which ended up in Love Death + Robots on Netflix as ‘Shapeshifters”), and “Ink and Blood”, which was my first published short story ever. It seems that the stories of mine I like best all started out on paper and came out of a fountain pen.

Funny thing: I went through one of my old notebooks today to search for notes and story ideas I had written down years ago, and came across an unfinished short story I can’t remember writing. It’s in my handwriting, so I obviously did, but I don’t have any memory of it at all. It’s called “Pirates of Shiraz”, and it starts with a group of friends doing a VR bombing run in a WWII multiplayer online game in their guild’s B-17 called Springfield Sally. The pilot has to bail on the group for a few minutes because the baby’s crying in real life in her crib. He puts the plane on autopilot right as German fighters come in, and the guild members tell him that they’ll make him pay the repair bill if the plane goes down. I don’t know where I was going with the story, but it started out pretty well.

If I finished that one now and put it out into the world, people would probably say that it’s a Ready Player One pastiche. (That old notebook is from 2010, so the story fragment was written long before RP1 came out.) This was definitely the weirdest moment I’ve had while going through old notes. That’s why I keep all the notebooks I fill…you never know what you’re going to forget in the future.