Dreams in Gunmetal Black

I've been writing the story bible of my super hero universe for about six months now. I've learned that I have well over 250 original characters on all points of the world. I know who they are, I know what kind of world they live in, I know where they can go to grab a bite to eat. I know what kind of beverage they can drink. I even know what they can watch on television.

Everything is set, or at least it was until I got involved in talking about one particular series they could watch. It was an adult-animated series (I mean adult as in mature, not adult as in "walkachicka-walkachicka") about a group of friends finding love and fun in the midst of all of them on opposite sides of the law. It felt like a cross between The Sopranos, Sin City, and Romeo and Juliet with a blending of, well, not Friends, but something with that kind of chemistry without being so vanilla. Sadly, this once again proved a theory I talked about on my website that there hasn't been an original idea since 1967.

The more I developed this story, the more I asked myself "Why aren't I really writing this story on its own rather than just a small part of a large universe?" So, I put the superhero story aside and began working on this "gangster noir" story. No superpowers. No invulnerabilities. No clearcut "good versus evil," because, despite what Rand said, there are shades of grey in everybody. Everybody has their reasons for doing what they're doing. It's not always pretty, but it's probably the most "real" story I have ever written.

For the first time in a long time, I feel truly energized by something I'm actually creating. Probably because it's not giving me a headache like the network-oriented articles I've been writing on my own site for years (man, just when I think Cartoon Network is going in the right direction, they continue to make that right turn at Alberqurque instead of that left).

I originally wanted to use my MySpace blog to talk about my progress. Then, my friend Karl Olson enlighted me about the revised TOS saying that, legally, MySpace and its corporate owners (that would be News Corp) would have ownership in everything posted there. So, I have created another place for that, Dreams in Gunmetal Black.

*bang*