Of Weird Stories and Writing True to Yourself

The weirdest ideas are often the best ideas, and if executed well, they make for delightful stories.

My current writing trajectory is about polish, and taking the proper time to make my writing be the best it can be at the time of release. Every book is a chance to work on something new, an opportunity to explore a facet of the storytelling craft in-depth, a maze of wonder where when you get to the end, you’re glad you took the long way through to complete the characters’ journey with twists and turns, and insurmountable walls.

I don’t have deadlines in the traditional sense, so if a book needs more time to find its luster, that’s not an issue. Going into 2025, I want to hit each deadline and make it a release date set into stone, barring life changes and extenuating situations. I will also shadow drop books in the coming year, with my goal of three Orchestrylus Odyssey books being a bare minimum amount that is not negotiable.

My Orchestrylus Odyssey novel due at the end of this month will be the last book of this year, seeing as A Knight Stained Black needs some more time to polish and get right. Four more books instead of five in 2024, not too shabby. Not a flex, just a good way to fail, if that makes sense.

This story dives into Polish folklore and chess, with an antagonist that literally wears her heart on her sleeve and forces couples into a deadly game with higher stakes than your normal tournament chess match, set within an underground (shadowy, not underneath the crust) world.

My latest novel concept is D65, and I’m shocked somebody hasn’t tried this horror novel idea out yet.

I’m a bit of a media science nerd, so this idea popped up as I was studying color science and ISF standards for fun. I’m a curious person when it comes to how things work and why they work.

What if an ISF calibrator was a serial killer who killed his victims based on their television sets not being set to the industry standards? To deviate from the creative intent of the filmmakers and the massive teams that make films possible means your life, because the killer is something of an artist himself and has to have things a specific way. Of course, only a deranged mind would do something like this, but I think it will be a fun idea to write.

I’ve never seen it done before, and I think it’ll make for a unique story, as far as motives go, anyway.

We need more weird ideas, more last frontiers of the mind. The world has many paths and industries that need more stories told. Some creators have minds so unique to them you can’t mistake the work for anyone else’s work.

That’s what’s so remarkable about writing stories in any format. There’s so much diversity of thought, of intention, and of subliminal discourse about world events and the zeitgeist of the moment.

There’s nothing wrong with being weird with our art, exploring different sides of the world for ideas.

But the most important thing is to write a story only you can write.