X-Factor-scribe Peter David once wrote, “One doesn’t decide to become a writer and then go scavenging for ideas. One becomes a writer because the ideas keep coming to you, whether you want them or not. It’s just how your mind is wired.”

And for me, that’s exactly what it’s like to be a creative writer.

Now if only I could find somebody to pay me for my ideas. It’s no secret that I want to be a professional writer someday. I have so many ideas for stories, characters, moments, dialogue and more that it would be a crime against humanity for me to never get discovered. Or it would be a crime against me, at least. But making it big in the world of comic books or novels is just as difficult as becoming a movie star. It doesn’t help that most of my writing these days is just recreational, that I haven’t completed a novel or a script or anything else I can shop around.

If I didn’t have a day job, I’d definitely be a starving artist.

For my 300th blog post, I’ve decided to give my readers a peek behind the curtain that is my mind. What are these stories that I’m so excited about? What wild ideas do I hope to bank my future on? What were the tales I doodled into my notebook in middle school? I’m not going to tell you every single story I’m working on – and definitely not the super important ones I hope to publish someday – but here are 6 different ideas I’ve had and cultivated over the years. Some of them are from my childhood, and only ever existed in my fevered mind. Some are actually stories I’ve written and published online, and you can read for yourself if you’re so interested.

Some are wholly original, and some are based around my favorite movies and video games from pop culture. I hope you enjoy the visit.

6. Panther Patrol

Long ago, I shared with everyone the comic strip I wrote and drew for my college newspaper, called Falmouth University. But did you know that I also wrote and drew a comic strip for my middle school newspaper, all the way back in fifth-grade? It’s true! And it was terrible. But looking back on the ideas and ‘jokes’, I can see early hints of the writer I would later become. I’d like to share with you some of those old strips, but I don’t have any copies. I think my mom has them stored away somewhere; at least I hope she does. Until I find them someday, we’ll all just have to rely on my memory.

Basically, Panther Patrol had two versions: the comic strip in the school newspaper and the TV show/movie that I dreamed up in the years afterwards, that only ever existed in my mind. Both, to some degree, were about a high school of anthropomorphic animals who dressed, talked and acted like normal teenagers. But you better believe they had wild adventures involving aliens, Green Day, Santa Claus and more!

Example: Anthropomorphic Animals

First, the comic strip, which had very little in common with the eventual TV show idea. To call the middle school newspaper a newspaper would be silly. It was basically a bunch of paper stapled together that had poems, puzzles and announcements that we sold for a quarter during lunch periods. I think it was called ‘Panther Pride’, maybe. My high school mascot was the Panthers – in case you couldn’t tell – all the way down in little old Port Byron, New York.

Even back then, I loved comics, and I volunteered to do a comic strip for the ‘paper’. The general idea was that two characters, Pat Panther and Zach Zebra were magical entities that lived around this fictional middle school and had wacky adventures. I still remember the first strip, which introduced the characters and the punchline was literally, “Don’t we look stupid?” I wasn’t mocking my own work directly. It was more an attempt to get readers to laugh with the characters. I took the comic strip and its world very seriously.

Hey kids! Do you know about furries?

Which is why I changed it all the time. Pat and Zach were initially two animals painted on a mural, who just happened to come to life. Somehow, over the course of maybe a dozen comics, they no longer had anything to do with the mural and were instead simply miniature sprites who lived in the library and used books for beds. I can remember adding a snake character at one point too, and I took everything so seriously that I figured out that a mud stain on the mural would create the snake. I had it all planned out!

By sixth-grade, however, the teachers in charge decided to cancel the newspaper and so I didn’t do the strip anymore. Though at some point there was a art contest to design the yearbook cover, and so in love with my characters was I that I drew a picture of Pat, Zach and the snake. I guess I’d hoped that all of my classmates were huge fans as well!

They were not

Just because the comic strip ended did not mean my ideas stopped coming. Panther Patrol eventually morphed into a full-on high school drama, only done as a cartoon show featuring teenage animals. And it all existed in my mind. I rarely wrote down my ideas. I thought about them so much, I didn’t need to write them down – but I did draw them. Back then, I used to sketch a lot of characters, both while doodling on paper and in MSPaint on the computer. I had created a stick figure template in Paint, which I could copy and paste however many I wanted. Then I would draw in clothing and facial features and whatever else into the stick figure, creating a new character. With that template, I created dozens of classmates for Panther Patrol. And each and everyone then got their own backstory or episodes.

Pat and Zach were soon joined by a hyena and a cheetah (or maybe she was a leopard or a tiger) to round out their traditional quartet, but I hardly stopped there. I created tons of characters using tons of animals. There was the giraffe who was once a part of Pat’s friends, but then got a girlfriend in high school and didn’t hang out with them anymore. There was the crazy monkey guy, the bird skank, the raccoon, the lion, lizards and more. I had episodes that featured both teenage drama as well as crazy adventure, like when a bunch of mythological creatures became anthropomorphized, and one of the characters became best friends with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

The closest this version of the Panther Patrol ever came to reality was when I drew a dozen or so of them by hand as an extra credit project in art class. In that class, any sort of art could be submitted for extra credit. So I drew and colored my cast and got some points. That was fun. But again, that picture has long be lost to posterity.

Panther Patrol also had its own movie planned – in my head, of course. It was going to be a big alien story, in which Earth is invaded by aliens, but the people of Earth win and drive them back. Then all of my characters would enlist in a space air force to go after the aliens on their own planet. I remember it being as much a drama as a comedy, with one of the main characters thought to be killed. In reality, he was taken to the slave pits, where he eventually led a slave revolt against the aliens. The movie would feature kickass spaceships and outer space battles. I would think up dialogue and scenes and just sort of daydream about them.

It would have been glorious.

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5. The Xavier Administration

The Xavier Administration is my own version of an alternate reality for the X-Men. It’s a re-occurring theme in X-Men comics (in all comics, actually) for the characters to visit an alternate reality and meet alternate versions of themselves. Or maybe they don’t meet. Perhaps it’s just a side project of some kind. There was the Age of Apocalypse, the Age of X, Days of Future Past, Kingdom Come, Earth 2, Earth 3 and dozens more. Everybody does it.

My own involves Professor Xavier as President of the United States!

~Get me some pizza rolls.~ Xavier

I came up with the idea for a role-playing game for my friends and I. It’s a hobby of ours that I plan on writing about at length someday. But essentially I wrote the premise of the game around this ‘Xavier as President’ idea, and everyone created their own characters in the context of the game, then we wrote stories together. Tons of fun. The game lasted a few months before real life got in the way and I closed up shop.

The story is this: rather than going into secret superheroing with the X-Men, bald and beautiful Charles Xavier becomes a more proactive political activist. His students join him with a much more open and public fight for mutant rights, instead of hiding away in a secret school playing superhero. This political activism eventually leads to real politics, until Xavier is elected President! His first order of business is to turn all of his mutant followers into the first super-powered police force! The X-Men become a nation-wide peace-keeping force dedicated to stopping any and all super-villains. Rather than superheroes being masked vigilantes, now they’re super cops!

Opposing Xavier is former star pupil Jean Grey. She doesn’t like the militarization of mutants, so she forms the Brotherhood to oppose Xavier. When an assassination attempt on Jean’s life fails, she blames Xavier and the war is on!

Anyway, hopefully I’ll get to write X-Men comics someday and I can make this story a reality.

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4. The Millsverse

The ‘Millsverse’ is my own superhero universe, like the Marvel Universe, DC Universe, Image Universe, etc. Writing comic books is my dream job, and as such, I have several ideas for my own unique and original superheroes. It just so happens that all of them can be squished together and be said to exist in the same universe – hence the name! Someday I’ll find an artist and a publisher and write some scripts, and hopefully make my fortune. Until then, these characters will only exist in my mind.

Unfortunately, since I do hope to write about these characters someday, I’m probably going to be a little vague in describing them here. As we know, Hollywood and their ilk love to put out copycat works whenever they can. That’s the last thing I want.

The universe itself isn’t too unique, I suppose. It’s basically like any superhero universe, with tons of superheroes and super-villains. There’s a main super-team, like the Avengers or the Justice League, but I haven’t given it a name yet. The stories, however, aren’t about the main super-team. All of my important characters exist in the nooks and crannies of the Millsverse, because that’s the kind of story I like to tell. Who are the unsung heroes and what are their stories? In my universe, superheroes are an established part of life, with reality TV shows and the like based around them.

Kind of, but not quite

One comic idea is ‘Road Trip’, about a group of young, low-powered, college-age men and women who travel across the country to compete for a spot on the main superhero team.

Another idea, ‘Middle America’, is about a 90s-era ‘X-treme’ hero who retired to a life of normalcy after an all too brief superhero career. Living quietly in middle America, he quickly finds out he’s the only hero around who has a chance to save the people in his quiet community from a dastardly super-villain. And he’ll have to team up with one of his old villains to do it!

I have a few more ideas, but like I said, I’m rather protective of the ones I actually hope to get published someday. Speaking of which, does anybody want to be my comic book artist? We could make it big, I tell’ya!

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3. Lands of Nevermore

The Land of Nevermore is my Middle Earth. It’s my Azeroth and it’s my Narnia. Nevermore is more far-off fantasy land, a world of swords, sorcery and grand adventure. I never read the works of JRR Tolkien, but I played a lot of Warcraft, so that’s where most of my ideas came from. Nevermore is a medieval world of humans, orcs, elves, centaurs and other fantasy races.

I think Nevermore would fit somehwere in the west between Dinotopia and Fantasia

At least the first version is like that. The second version of Nevermore is a badass fighting game based off Mortal Kombat!

Nevermore and it’s two separate versions came to life in the back pages of my middle school and high school notebooks. While I should have been taking notes, I was writing detailed plots, characters and more in my notebooks. The two separate versions have some aspects in common, but they were largely separate. Let’s take them one at a time.

RPG/Novel: The first version of Nevermore is a role-playing game or novel, basically an epic fantasy story that could be told either way. The world was broken up into different continents, each of which had a single race living and governing. Humans, elves, orcs and more all had their own continents with different governments and laws. I remember that the orcs were the only continent with a democracy and a president, because I’m a big orc fan.

They're a proud, noble, green people

I don’t remember the story itself, but I know Nevermore starred a young human girl who had to rise up and go on the epic journey. She traveled from continent to continent, getting into mischief and adventures while working towards the larger storyline against some great evil. And she picked up companions along the way. I know I had this all planned out better when I was young. There was even a sequel. But alas, it’s all lost to the ravages of time!

Fighting Game: The second version of Nevermore is a fighting game with dozens of characters and an ongoing storyline. This was around the time that the N64 introduced us all to gaming on a 3D plain. So rather than the static 2D fighting games like Mortal Kombat and  Street Fighter, The Land of Nevermore would involve large arenas where the fighters could go anywhere in any direction. It would be up to the players to face off against one another. But they could do so from any direction! I thought it was a novel idea at the time.

Now this would be a badass idea!

Sadly, I again don’t remember the story…probably involving good guys vs. bad guys. But I remember that the characters were all based around elements. Fire, water, ice, plants, rock, metal and more, every character had a unique origin and a unique element-based power. I think ‘Fire’ was one of the stars, and ‘Plant’ was a centaur, I remember that.

This version of Nevermore kept getting sequels. “Land of Nevermore”; “Return to Nevermore”; “War for Nevermore”; “The End of Nevermore”; and even more beyond that. I don’t remember how many total, but I just kept coming up with stories and characters. I eventually got a little silly, coming up with ‘elements’ like rubber and chocolate. Silly as they may have been, though, I was having a blast! I wonder if I still have those notebooks somewhere…

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2. My fan fiction

Now we’re getting to the stuff you can actually see for yourself. I have written several stories based on existing properties, and managed to post them online. This is called ‘fan fiction’, and while fan fiction may get a bad rap because of people who write stories about Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy having hot, graphic sex, that isn’t what I do at all. Or did. Most of these stories come from my high school days, when I was fairly proficient with my family’s laptop. I wrote a lot. I first discovered fan fiction by reading some random Internet person’s stories based on Final Fantasy 7. I was still new to the Internet, and I thought this was a legitimate, in-canon continuation of the game’s story…but later learned it was just some guy writing his own stories using that world and those characters.

Well that still turned me on to the fun of fan fiction.

One of my favorite creative hobbies is to create my own characters to plug into an existing world. But instead of creating a Mary Sue to have hot, steamy sex with Harry Potter, I would create characters and stories that existed alongside the main narrative. The main characters rarely featured in my stories. Back when I was a fan of the Power Rangers, I created the Gray Ranger, who would pilot Titanus back in the early seasons. One of the first superheroes I ever created was Spider-Boy, who was basically just black-costumed Spider-Man in a blue cape, with a utility belt and web-shooters on the outside of his wrists and ankles. I drew a picture and sent the idea to Marvel Comics once…they never got back to me.

It's genius, I tell ya!

In the world of Animorphs, I created Dustin the Animorph-Controller, a kid who gained the morphing ability, but also had a Yeerk in his head. But Dustin’s Yeerk was a good guy, and secretly helped the Animorphs with Dustin’s approval. I created several Animorphs-based characters and teamed them up to create the Othermorphs. My plan was to write to author K.A. Applegate, and she would be so impressed with my ideas that she’d immediately hire me to write with her.

But all of those were just ideas in my head. Here are the actual fan fiction stories that I wrote. I make no excuses for the quality. I was just starting as a writer.

Star Wars: Children of the Code: The Fall of Sing.

My Star Wars fan fiction takes place at the end of Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Remember the climactic battle when Yoda leads all the Jedi into a raid on that alien planet to rescue Obi-Wan and Anakin? Well my theory was that such a raid would leave the younglings alone back at the Jedi Temple. I created several young Jedi for the story, including protagonist Tasher Jaken, a bold and head-strong young man determined to be a great Jedi. Tasher and his friends sneak into the Jedi Council Chambers and intercept a call for help. With all of the adults gone, Tasher and his friends respond and have to face off against feared bounty hunter Aurra Sing!

They could take her

Mutants on the Run and Ultimate X-Force.

Back when the Ultimate Universe was fresh in Marvel Comics, it was very exciting to see the Ultimate versions of familiar characters. As I mentioned in my Xavier Administration entry, everybody loves visiting an alternate reality in comics to see the different versions of the heroes. Well the Ultimate Universe is as legit as alternate realities come, and I loved reading Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man and more. When they first started out, I decided to create the Ultimate-version of Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man. Joined by Cecilia Reyes, Jubilee, Marrow and more, Madrox formed Ultimate X-Force, a small team of mutants banding together for survival and companionship. I wrote several stories featuring the team, and based each story on what was happening in the X-Men comics. Like the Sentinels hunting mutants in New York City, Magneto’s attack on Washington DC and even the Hulk’s rampage in Manhattan from The Ultimates. Only instead of participating in these events, X-Force existed behind the scenes.

You can also read: Strength in Numbers, Flight of Heroes, Into the Night and In the Shadow of the Hulk.

World of Warcraft: Sespi’s Fizzy Pop.

The only recent bit of fan fiction I’ve written was for a fan fiction contest for World of Warcraft. In 2010, I wrote a cute little story about a goblin named Sespi Fizzlepop. Rather than some big action piece, I wanted to write a little slice of life story set in the world of Azeroth. I didn’t win the contest, but I’m still rather proud of my story. Sespi is a young goblin merchant for the Steamwheedle Cartel, selling his wares in the harsh plains of Desolace (pre-Cataclysm). But then a sudden string of random encounters changes Sespi’s life forever. And Azeroth would never be the same again!

He's a level 12 Businessman

The most recent WoW expansion has made goblins a playable race. I’m tempted to get back into the game just so that I can create a goblin character and name him Sespi. Then I’ll love him forever.

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1. Pokemon: The Master Six

This probably should have gone in my Fan Fiction entry, but the saga of The Master Six is my youthful, fan fiction opus! I loved the first Pokemon game for Game Boy, and was a mild fan of the cartoon show. Combined with ideas pilfered from several other sources, I created a team of pokemon trainers who would go on to battle the evils of Team Rocket! I wrote 3 1/2 stories about The Master Six. Two of which are still online. I don’t know what ever happened to the third, but I know I wrote it. I never ended up publishing the parts of the fourth story that I wrote. But beyond those, I had planned out an entire saga for the Master Six! Extensive histories for all the characters, a connection to the deepest mythologies of pokemon and epic tales of love and friendship.

Yes, that Pokemon

The Master Six had it all! It was one of the first examples of long-term storytelling and planning that I can remember doing. I had callbacks, cameos, characters with hidden agendas and mysteries that needed solving. Everything was tied together, and all of the characters had deep emotional journeys planned for them. Even my side characters had real chutzpah But like I said, sadly, most of it only ever existed in my head.

If you’re familiar with the premise of pokemon, either the games or the cartoon, then you know it’s about young people who team up with the cute little critters and go on adventures. They have to collect as many pokemon as they can, then battle the pokemon with other trainers. Most people are at least familiar with Pikachu and the cartoon.

Childhood 101

Well my stories were about a young girl named Heather and her pokemon Max, the Pidgey. Heather was gifted with a magic pokeflute that could paralyze pokemon, making them easier to catch. In hindsight, it should have been a flute that could control pokemon, like the Pied Piper. Anyway, Heather starts out on her pokemon journey like any other kid. But when she eventually returns home, she discovers that the villainous Team Rocket have laid waist to her neighborhood! Vowing revenge, Heather puts together a team of other special pokemon trainers to go after Team Rocket and learn the truth about why they attacked her hometown.

Heather became known as Whistler, and I create her as my trainer whenever I buy a new pokemon game. She was joined by Gavin, known as Shooter, who used a blow dart gun and various potions to help him catch pokemon. He’d also trained his Machop to use the gun in a fight. Rodney, Specks, had invented several pairs of goggles that he used to catch and battle pokemon. He had infrared goggles, binoculars, microscopic goggles and more! Amber Lynn was called Velocity because she had invented a device that, when placed on the handlebars of her bicycle, would negate all wind resistance. She could just keep peddling faster and faster without having to worry about friction or resistance, and therefore reach incredible speeds. I stole that idea from a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.

Adorable

The last two members of the Six were Zak, who had ‘captured’ the famous pokemon Mew. He was known as Psycho because Mew is a powerful, legendary psychic pokemon. Finally there was Lindsey, a quiet, mysterious girl who had the strange power of being able to transform into pokemon. Stolen from Animorphs, I know. Anyway, Lindsey was also a little psychic herself.

That was my team! I was so proud of them.

You can read their first adventure here: The Master Six.

And the sequel here: Master Six 2: Truth and Consequences.

In the first story, the team confronts Team Rocket and learns the horrible truth about why Heather’s hometown was destroyed. In the sequel, they travel to the mysterious Cinnabar Island and start learning some of the mysterious about Heather’s father, why he gave her up to an aunt when she was a little girl and what her father has to do with the mysteries of Lindsey. Everyone would learn that Lindsey was a clone of Mew, but a humanoid clone. She was essentially MewThree!

Part 3 had the Master Six teaming up with the Central Pokemon Intelligence Agency (creative, I know), and battling a pair of giant, robotic mech pokemon! They were Mecha-Godzilla-sized monsters! The team had to infiltrate the robots and shut them down. I know I wrote this story and posted it online, but I guess I never got around to putting it on FanFiction.net. A shame.

The fourth story was a special one, but I only wrote it halfway. My pokemon stories were  all first-person narratives, and with the fourth story, every chapter had a different narrator. It involved the Master Six being attacked by the Rocket Six, Team Rocket’s own team of evil pokemon trainers. Both the Master Six and the Rocket Six got to narrate their own chapters. An epic undertaking for a budding writer like me.

I don’t remember who all the Rocket Six were, though I’m pretty sure the evil genius who created the giant mechs was a member. There was also Eevee, a female trainer who had one version of each eevee evolution. I liked her, and planned on having Eevee return later in the series as an ally to the Master Six.

She had ALL the eevees!

The most important member of the Rocket Six was Red, a humanoid pokemon monster man. He was essentially half-man, half-Growlithe. Later stories would reveal that Red was part of a whole ‘family’ of anthropomorphic pokemon people. There was a Pikachu, a Ditto, a Tangela, a Snorlax and more! And I called them…

Pokemen.

C’mon! How has nobody thought of that before! It’s the greatest, most game-changing pun ever!

Close enough!

Those were just the four stories I wrote. But like I said, I had a whole epic saga planned for the Master Six! Along with meeting the Pokemen, the Master Six would learn that they were all created in a lab on Cinnabar Island. Not only was Heather’s dad part of the science team that made them (including turning his own pet Growlithe into Red), we would learn that Lindsey was one of the Pokemen. She was the Mew version, only the scientists also spliced her with DNA from the shape-changing Ditto, giving her a human appearance and the ability to transform into pokemon. And that was the big mystery of Lindsey, told here for the first time.

Other Master Six stories included a trip by Velocity into an alternate reality, where the Master Six never became a team. The Six would also learn the true history of the Legendary Birds and Legendary Dogs, and how there weren’t just 3 of them.

Getting warmer

The whole saga ended with Lindsey going evil, turning into a dark, psychic villainness who wanted to destroy the world! She would have gathered an army of pokemon and attacked…only to eventually be returned to the side of the angels when Zak, her crush, told her that he loved her. Kind of like how Xander saved Evil Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I loved those characters. I put a ton of thought into their adventures and future stories. I had big plans!

I still do, I suppose. If I ever get hired to write for the Pokemon TV show or spin-off novels (someone has to write those, don’t they?) then perhaps the Master Six could get their time in the sun.

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So those are some of my favorite creative ideas both past and present. I have a ton more, both original ideas and other fan fiction ideas. I’ve got my own vampire story, a werewolf story, a zombie story; you name it. All I need to do is settle down and actually write these one day. Wish me luck and I hope you enjoyed the visit!