Observation & Inspiration

 -Being Original-

One of the hardest things you can do is be original. Even ideas that sound original on paper could be compared to something else. Whether you mean to or not, it happens. South Park had a whole episode about literally every plot Butters came up with sounding like the plot of a Simpsons episode.

I consider my most original ideas to be my Omar & Cruz stories, but even then one could compare them to other stories.

• "Omar & Cruz Steal a Spy Car" is kind of like "Dude, Where's My Car?"
• "Omar & Cruz Befriend a Ghost" is like "Casper, The Friendly Ghost".
• "Omar & Cruz Break a Witch's Broom" is like an 80's slasher flick like "Nightmare on Elm Street".

You shouldn't let the possibility of comparison deter you from what you want to write. If you look hard enough you'll find that everything is kinda like something.

-Do Some Research-

When I wrote "Zeus Did It Again", I did some reading about Greek myth. I didn't accept one version of it as the only version or the true version. It's all fiction, after all. And I didn't want to just recycle the same versions of characters I've seen or read. There is a reason Disney's Hades is different from God of War's Hades or Hades' (the video game) Hades. I knew which Gods and monsters I wanted to write about and I knew what about them I wanted to focus on.

The whole plot of ZDIA is kicked off by Thebe, who is the Teumessian Fox. The short version of the original story is that the Teumessian Fox was this fox sent by the Gods to eat kids in Thebes, as a punishment to the people living there. This guy Creon found a hound called Laelaps that could catch anything. So, you got a fox that can't be caught and a dog that can catch anything in an eternal chase, only stopped when the Gods turned them to stone.

In ZDIA, the fox was later named Thebe (like Phoebe, but with a T) and she had been ordered to take out humans related to Gods for thousands of years. She eventually grew to feel remorse for doing this and when Zeke, the protag of the book, showed potential and fought back-she saw an opportunity to turn against her cruel master.

-Know The Lingo-

Right now I'm working on a book that's heavily influenced by fighting games. I am not good at games like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter whatsoever, but I love those games and their characters. I watch videos of people playing games like that. Watching content about fighting games, I've picked up some of the terms the community uses and took inspiration from those terms.

There are two characters that come to mind. First is Chip Damage. He's the simple, heroic main character of the book's in-universe fighting game. "Chip damage" refers to damage a character takes in a fighting game while blocking. Typically, when a character blocks an attack, they still take little bits of damage. Like they're being "chipped away" at.

Another character is Hit Stunner. He is the humorous, best friend/rival of Chip. "Hit stun" is when a character is hit by an attack and they are temporarily unable to move. They literally stop in place and need more time to exit their "oof, I've been hit" animation. This, as you assume, allows the opponent to keep hitting them or perhaps charge up another attack.

-Real Life Sources-

I've written for characters that are directly inspired by people in my personal life. One of the antagonists in "Omar & Cruz Steal a Spy Car" was based on my Papa Dave. He's not with us now, but he was a very smart guy. Slick and sly too. He had this shit-eating-grin that told you "yeah, I know everything  I need to know".

Granted, the book version of him was more driven by greed-in a Mr. Krabs kind of way. I thought about that a lot. Using his memory to write for a bad guy. So, in another Omar & Cruz story, I wrote that character to be a mentor figure to the boys. That story isn't out yet, but I hope it balances things out between me and the big guy.

In "Blue Collar Robot", I had this guy nicknamed Double O. He was based on my best friend Justin. In no uncertain terms, I think Double O is the best example of capturing someone's voice in a book. I've known Justin since high school so I've been listening to him yap for half my life. I know how he talks.

Justin is also the father of a very special girl and it's always been inspiring to me to see a macho man like Justin be such a good girl-Dad. The thing with Double O is that the character was born female. This doesn't correlate to Justin one-to-one, but its a nod to how gender doesn't really matter to a person's characteristics or values. The whole book is about giant robots too, so it made for a nice analogy. "I thought to myself; Hey, I'm like a mech. I was like a robot girl being operated by a little boy".

My first book "Pavement" had a lot of real life influences, but the premise of the story came from my real life. Pavement is about two people travelling across the country and discovering weird places. My wife and I used to drive to shopping malls in places we'd never driven to before.

We made a lot of inside jokes and everlasting memories. If it weren't for those adventures; I wouldn't have Pavement. I don't even know if I'd have any books. That's why you have to take what the world gives you. Sure, it seems random or cruel sometimes, but if you reflect and you think, you might find the things that happen to us may just happen for us.

Be kind. Thanks for reading.