I just posted the first chapter of Scumbug Scrambag today! It’s about an alien ooze who works as a hit-man for an intergalactic crime-family, but now goes on the lam to protect an eight-year-old human girl.
This is the latest in a series of thingies I’ve done. I think doing thingies is good for me. I enjoy feeling productive and making thingies to show people. I guess that’s why I’m making pictures again, too. People like pictures. I do, at least.
I think Scumbug Scrambag will be under 40,000 words, a short novella. Unlike a lot of stories I’ve written here, I’m not really sure where it’s going? I’m trusting my idea of a virtue-wheel to buoy me and named the chapters after things which I think should happen one way or another. The Scumbug has a strict notion of morality and it’ll be tested in the coming chapters. Is it true that every life-form either eats its parents or its kids? Even if it is true, is it any sort of thing to teach an impressionable young child like Julia?
And which side does humanity fall on? This first chapter paints the ambassador representing Earth as kind of a dickhead. He was apparently willing to kill an orphan for political points against the mysterious Big Cheese—the ambassador is the kind of life-form who eats his kids. But is that ruthlessness really what humanity needs right now? We’d better hope Julia eats him first.
And what about Germa the Gerbil and Lady Mantoid? Where on the spectrum will the Scumbug settle? Who knows? Certainly not me.
I think I’ll post a new chapter every two to three weeks, but no promises. I’m running a marathon in Japan, soon, so my schedule’s a bit up-in-the-air.
Ted Writes 