Showing posts with label ideas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ideas. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

My Amazing Invention


Okay, so FIRST, so I'm not negligent, I have to throw out a HUGE Happy Birthday to Leanne!  She is fellow Burrower and has been my VERY most reliable beta reader ever since the beginning.  I am posting otters and hedgehogs and stuff over at Burrowers, Books and Balderdash in her honor...

And now back to my brilliance... erm.

Okay, so it hasn't been invented, but it's a FABULOUS idea, and if one of YOU know how to invent it and then share the money from it, that would be EXCELLENT!

So do you want to know what it is? Well I'll tell you in a minute, but first I need a brief digression to tell you where it came from!!!


So this weekend I decided to do a little organizing. I know, scary, right? But one of the things I organized, because I'm pretty sure SOMEWHERE I have written a piece of something that I felt compelled to write ANOTHER part of... so I was putting these pieces of paper with 'book ideas' in a spreadsheet, and I found this thing that I have NO CLUE what the book I intended was meant to be, but MAN, for a product it's AMAZING!

*cough *

So here goes the clip that holds the idea...

Machu Picchu, Peru
It started with an assignment for the fitness magazine I was writing for. I was to go to GenWorld and test the new Virtual Elliptical, a machine that allowed the exerciser to experience the halls of Greece, the shores of the Pacific, the hike to Machu Picchu, all from the safety (and climate control) of a high-end gym. A person could even travel back in time and jog next to the Berlin wall, or traverse the outskirts of famous battles. I'd been lucky to get the assignment.

I arrived at GenWorld and first received a brief tour of their concept room and had an orientation to the machine and software.

“If you see a turn you want to take, you can take it. An attractive jogger you'd like to follow? Be my guest, but you have to keep up with them unless you call out for them to slow down.”

He was teasing me. I know he didn't expect me to run somebody down while I was here on assignment. And then it registered. “I can talk to people?”

“Of course you can. Fully visually and auditorially interactive, though to change directions, you need the lever, as your feet are on the set, rotating platforms of the elliptical machine. Resistance though, will change as you climb or go down... it even mimics sand. We tried to make it as realistic as possible.”

They have this microscreen version (NOT the same)
“And the music?”

“Works like an iPod. In fact you can plug your own iPod in, or we can select the music appropriate to the location. To talk to people, you need to turn it down, just like when you are wearing headphones.”

It sounded like a dream device. I climbed on, put on the headset that was far less cumbersome than I'd imagined, and began the machine.


****
Okay, that's where I'm leaving the writing clip. I don't share anything from first draft very often, but all I was really trying to get across was the set-up... I imagine the plot meant to have... somebody USE the system to hide a clue and solve some international drama or something, but all I have is the scene...

But imagine this, too: as authors, we could collaborate with our BOOK settings, so people could exercise in the midst of the world our book takes place in. Wouldn't that rock?


You could run the walls of the Red Keep

Or the streets of Diagon Alley

Or run from orcs... seems pretty motivating to me...

Be sure and email me if you decide to execute this as a real product. You totally need my twisted mind involved.

You have any inventions lately?

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Book Conception

You heard me... We are having book sex today. But probably I should esplain... I thought doing a WriMo was a really nice opportunity to examine the book in parts (or writing thereof)... so I will talk generals, and where appropriate, give an example or two from the WiP...

I still plan on blogging most days, BTW, but it's possible I will miss one here and there... maybe count on 4 days a week. Probably they won't be the formal, well-researched things I usually do *shifty* (if you are new here, you may not have recognized that as sarcasm... I am periodically informative, but most of what you will learn from me is how to get into trouble... though I do get bonus points for my attitude and work-ethic most days... unless you are a figure of authority, whereby you have your work cut out for you because I don't like to be told what to do <*/digression>

ANYWAY...

The book-writing theme will maybe be 2 days a week (maybe more initially—I have three planned this week), and it's possible the other days I will be silly... I know. SHOCKING.


BOOK SEX

Which should NOT be confused with sex in books, which is neither here nor there, in my opinion, if it goes with the story, YAY, if not *rolls eyes*, but it is NOT what I am talking about...

I'm talking about WHERE DO BOOKS COME FROM? You know... the birds and the bees of the books...


*   Dreams (I have had a lot of book elements come from dreams)
*   Observations. Sometimes this is just a matter of opening your eyes to the everyday... listening to conversations (don't let anyone tell you it's rude—It's RESEARCH!), looking at settings for set-ups,
*   Reading. They SAY there is no new tale, just a new telling...
*   Songs. Anyone else out there get serious book inspiration from a song, whether lyrics, music, or... history of a song?
*   Movies/TV...
*   What you KNOW.

I'm sure I'm missing oodles, but these are all sources I've taken ideas, snippets or details from each of these sources at different times. It's like they are the nice ova... but the thing IS, unlike mammal sex, books really get better results if you have a collection from at least a few sources. And then they need (for me) the fertilizer of some mind games... how would this idea fit with that OTHER completely unrelated idea... and then it needs to GESTATE a good long time.


My WiP

The idea for my BuNoWriMo novel was originally born when I read Kerry Greenwood's Earthly Delights. It had all of the FUN of Cozy Mystery, but included a drug overdose theme, a sex shop run by a person the MC doesn't know the gender of, a witch, the need to dress as a dominatrix... it was like a Cozy, but Tarted up!!! Now it had a baking theme... I don't really DO domestic skills, even run as a business... plus... I just don't KNOW anything about that stuff... but I DO have a vast knowledge of a certain craft... that would be clever and FUN for a woman to be an entrepreneur... Microbrews... (so we have a BOOK and a WHAT you KNOW). I've done some OBSERVING of the types of neighboring shops that would fit and be fun—plus there is my knowledge of Portland... I even plan to do a little research, though that may come after I write the book.

I first had this idea about a year ago... I considered it for NaNoWriMo, but it hadn't fermented enough, yet. And a micro, to taste proper, needs its time to ferment...



What about YOU? Where do books come from in YOUR world?