Writing Blog Number 2 (continued)

20251229 Novel #35

Novel #35

The second of my spec fic comedies, Fluffy Doom was about the same length as Steele Blast…, but this time based on horror tropes. I started writing it before I finished Steele Blast… because the idea would not leave me alone.

So, what happened was I was watching an old film where a guy was bitten by a reptile-man and became, himself, a reptile-man. Now, I was already well into my monster dictionary, and so knew about therianthropes, and decided to use the least likely animal that would be turned into a human-animal cross-breed, and the least scary.
         I chose hamsters.
         So, this is a story about man-biting were-hamsters. And normal hamsters being carriers of the disease that creates the change. I used every werewolf cliché I could find and added it to a were-hamster tale and made it silly. I also added the cliché of searching for a cure, the girl spraining her ankle at an inopportune time, a giant hamster wheel and the police being completely ineffective and bipolar.
         Unfortunately, I think the idea was funnier than the execution. There are still some funny bits in it but it is certainly no Steele Blast…. I reckon I might have rushed it. In the end, after all the Speculative Humour tales were completed, it is the second worst (the worst is the last one, and that has stopped me writing them; I was forcing the humour).
         But it has were-hamsters, changes PoV to lots of side characters, and has some weird situations.
         It is not the best, but it still makes me smile.

Excerpt
CHAPTER 1 – THE CHAPTER WHERE WE MEET OUR HERO AND GET A HINT OF WHAT’S TO COME.
It all started for Craig, interestingly enough, with a solid kick to the testicles. And, unfortunately for Craig, he was most definitely the kickee and not the kicker. Even more unfortunately, the kicker in question possessed the legs of a goddess and the breasts of a relief map of the Himalayas, and was wearing, at the time, a pair of blue stilettos. Still even more unfortunately, the particular kicking person also had a third dan mauve belt in taekwondo.
         To say Craig dropped like a lump of jelly from a kitchen table would be to understate everything about his response. Words were not possible from the prone pile that had once been Craig, and his hand stretching out pathetically towards the retreating beauty barely left its tender cupping of the afflicted area.
         It may have been his fault, that part of his mind not engaged in the processing of pain and curling into the foetal position suggested. After all, he had said he wasn’t overly keen on her choice of movie and maybe couldn’t they see something in a language other than French. Of course, when it came to Sandra, he should have known better – didn’t the Riesling versus Moselle argument of last Christmas and subsequent coma teach him anything? – but he wasn’t really thinking. He was just hoping that the fact the only language he knew apart from English, was a list of Indonesian swear words he had learnt in Bali a decade earlier might sway things in his favour for once.
         He had been, as already mentioned, catastrophically wrong.
         He stayed where he fell for quite a while. He wasn’t really sure how long, but it must have been some time because the amount of people walking around and over and on him diminished markedly. By the time his eyes forced themselves open, only two pairs of black boots could be seen.
         The unfortunateness continued when he gazed upwards and saw who the owners of said boots were. Two police officers stared down at him with practised malice, one already holding what looked like a taser in his hands. “Well, well, well,” one said stereotypically, “What have we here then? Drunk in public?” He seemed pleased by the prospect.
         “Help. Kicked.” Craig managed to speak.
         “What did he say?” the cop with the taser asked, clearly struggling to form a coherent thought.
         “Kicked. He was kicked. You know, kicked.” To emphasise his point, the other cop kicked Craig with each mention of the word.
         “Oh, kicked.” The other followed suit.
         “You know what that means?” the slightly more intelligent cop asked with an exaggerated sigh.
         “Uhh, no.” He went to kick Craig again, but missed and got his own ankle. The pain didn’t register.
         “Paperwork.” Another overly exaggerated sigh and a ‘why me?’ look to the heavens. The other’s shoulders slumped giving him an all too natural Neanderthal look.

And that is Fluffy Doom, a strange horror tale that purports to be funny…