Newsletter 07/05/2026

I hope you all had an outstanding Independence Day. My new neighbors had a great party. The house next to me sat empty for years, but the young couple who took over did an incredible job cleaning it up and remodeling the interior. They also have a Groodle (Golden Retriever + Poodle) and they're such wonderful dogs. They rented an inflatable bounce-house for the kids while the folks sat out in the shade and chatted. We had a nice time.

                 This week I'm going to introduce to you plot animals that writers have to put up with.

 The Plot Bunny - 🐰 Story ideas that come bounding in and start multiplying. Writers often say they have plot bunnies, but they're just bragging.

 The Plot Chicken - 🐣They squawk, flap around, and shit everywhere, but when you actually need to do something with them, they scatter. These are the creatures that writers encounter most often, but we lie and say that they're Plot Bunnies

 The Plot Sloth - 🦥Takes its sweet goddamned time turning into something useful. Plot Sloths are a common companion of writers who have a publisher whose favorite word is "Deadline!"

 The Plot Mule - 🫏When you take two story plots and mate them together, and you get something totally cool, but you can’t get a sequel out of it to save your life.

 The Plot Cat - 😼 Lazy little bastards who take up your headspace, scare away all the plot bunnies, chase around the plot chickens and make so much racket you can't work, they scratch up all your current work, and after all that they won’t do anything except lay there.

 The Plottweiler - 🐕Barks loudly and viciously so you can’t ignore it, distracts you from everything else you want to write, but leaves you too paralyzed with fear to actually put words down.

 The Plot Squirrel - 🐿️ Cute, distracting, full of nuts, and just TRY to keep up with that train of thought.

 The Plot Bedbug - 🦑Shows up during the night, chews on you so you can’t sleep, and disappears in the daylight. EVERY writer has a bedroom full of Plot Bedbugs. We keep a note pad on our night table hoping to write down the ideas that the Plot Bedbugs generate, but in the morning we find we wrote everything in Martian Hieroglyphics

 The Plot Tick - 🐞Burrows in, bleeds you dry, and leaves you with the creepy-crawlies. Mostly preys on horror writers. They're why I don't write horror anymore.

 The Plotroach - 🪳Totally unappealing, but so tenacious they’ll survive anything until you finally give up and write them. They're good for a story score of 3.9 on Literotica.

 The entire time I wrote Stormwatch Chapter 16, I had a Plottweiler barking at me, demanding I write Gods Save the Queen Book 5. I finally finished Chapter 16 and turned to start Gods Save the Queen Book 5, and where is he? Snoring under the bed.

                 I'm deep into Gods Save the Queen Book 5. Part one is going to be a bit odd - The book starts with the birth of the twins. Nick and Octavia's son Marlon is six-years-old, their daughter Hollie is three-years-old, and Octavia gives birth to the twins, Llywellyn (Lou), and Llywella (Loo Loo). Those names have meanings and will be explained in the book. Then, in Chapter 2, we jump backwards in time about 28 years and join Octavia's parents Felix and Jutta Aldana, and you find out why they drop off Octavia at the orphanage in Torwin-Armistad.

                 Then we return to Elm Springs for a chapter of Nick being Nick, then jump back in time about 60 years and learn about Nana Peacock. We spend a chapter with the Peacock family, Nana and Norm and their kids, Nicholas, Agness, Gertrude, and Martyn. A sudden plot bunny popped up. Martyn is Nana's youngest son; Nick was named for her oldest son. I had planned to make Martyn a wizard of some sort and return. What fun would that be for Marlon and Hollie to have a great-great uncle appear for the holidays and keep confusing their dad for a man that died 40 years ago?

                 I'm going to disappear Martyn one way or another. I'd like to bring him back around Yuletide. Another plot bunny hopped up - he's looking for the most powerful wizard on Edux, and possibly the entire world of Kodu, only to find that his great-grandnephew married her. Any thoughts on this? Could he be a permanent plot member? I think he'd be a great companion for Pepin who is getting on in years and spends his days lying in front of the fireplace.

                 Another thought - This is a re-write of my Discworld story Happy Hogswatch, but there's no disc, no elephants, no turtle, no silliness, and worst of all, no librarian. Great-great-granduncle Martyn Peacock could be my replacement for the librarian. Unfortunately he won't speak ook, but I'll give him a different language that only Octavia will understand. He won't have rabbit-ear antennas coming out of his head like some other Uncle Martin, but he'll fill the same niche. I'll give him a door into his laboratory like Izhar… or maybe I could make him Izhar! He's been watching his great-great grandnephew for the past seven years. What do you think?

                 This is a shining example of how these plot critters work. They whisper in your ear and give you so many great ideas. Plot bunnies are the worst. I'll be working on Stormwatch, then a plot bunny wearing a Uduithian coat of arms comes up and whispers in my ear. "We'll have the king come to Nicks farm unannounced and go fishing. He tells Nick of impending danger; international spies, elf ninjas, squadrons of dragons!"

                 I write the plot bunny's whispers down and say, "Yes! That's good! What's next?"

                 The bunny looks at me and says, "Next? Whatsoever do you mean?" and begins to gnaw on my notebook. Don't count on plot-critters to finish anything, they're only good at getting you to start writing, then they step back and giggle as you try to make sense of their babbling.

                 Other than getting swarmed by plot bunnies it's been an interesting week. I've been experimenting with AI prompts, using premade AI prompts to force the AI that comes with Microsoft to do something creative rather than corrosive. I'll discuss the prompts next time because they're quite involved, but they work! If you're subscribing to Grammarly or ProWriterAid, these prompts will be your ticket back to return $120 to your pocket when you cancel your subscription.

                 Thanks again for being there, and keep in mind that if you have any questions or suggestions, I'm here to answer your emails. Also, I'm still looking for story suggestions for Summer Lovin' and  Halloween so if there's something you'd like to read, let me know and I'll try to make your dream come true.