The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies (13 page)

As always, here's a look at where I got my ideas. I should warn those of you who like to read this part first that there are some spoilers in the explanations.

All the Rage

One of my main sources for ideas is my “what if” file. Each day, I jot down a what-if question. The file is currently sixty-two pages long, single spaced, with more than 1,100 ideas in it, not counting the ideas I've used and removed. This story was inspired by the simple question, “What if there was a kid who never got angry?” I enjoy writing stories about the one kid in a class who is different in some way. (See “The Boy Who Wouldn't Talk” from
In the Land of the Lawn Weenies
for another example of this.)

Frankendance

Every dad wants to find the perfect guy for his daughter. I couldn't help thinking how much easier that would be if
you could make the guy. I liked the idea of a dad doing that. And I'm a fan of the original
Frankenstein
movie. As for the rest of the story, I'm as surprised as anyone by what happened once they got to the dance.

The Ratty Old Bumbershoot

I think I was fighting an umbrella in a windstorm when this idea hit me. Umbrellas do seem to be alive when they start flapping and twisting. They sort of remind me of bats, though that's not quite the direction this story took. As for
bumbershoot,
it's such a wonderfully silly word that I had to use it.

Dear Author

I love getting real fan letters, but I also sometimes get letters that are obviously a classroom assignment. They almost always have the same form—three things I like about your book, three questions, and so on. I don't know how all of this started, but I think it would be so much better if students were assigned to write to someone in their community or to someone who doesn't get much mail.

The Wizard's Mandolin

I was tuning my guitar and thinking about sharp and flat notes when the idea for this story hit me. I also own a mandolin, but I don't play it very well. (I own a banjo, too, but I'm pretty sure “The Wizard's Banjo” wouldn't have had the sort of feel I was looking for.) I had fun with the viewpoint of this one. It's nice writing things in different styles.

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

I hate to admit that I got the idea for the ending first. I just envisioned a carnival ride turning into something much less pleasant. I'm not sure what that says about my mind. Then, I had the fun task of creating someone worthy of being put on that ride.

Yackity-Yak

Another gift from my what-if pile. Originally, I was going to use a magic ring. But a book of spells made more sense. It's fun to write a story once in a while that has just one person speaking, without any descriptions or any dialogue from other characters. Given the plot of this story, I couldn't think of a better time to let one character do all the talking. This is another reason I love short stories. You can experiment and do all sorts of things that might not work in a novel.

Wish Away

I'm not the first (or the seven hundredth) person to write a story about wishes being granted. I've had at least two wish stories in earlier collections (“Anything You Want” and “The Genie of the Necklace”). This particular story started out with the idea, “What if anyone could wish things away from anyone else?” I tweaked the idea a bit, to limit who was doing the taking. That happens a lot. An idea won't be quite right for some reason, but I'll play with it and work around the parts that are causing a problem.

The Department Store

I had no idea where this one was going when I started. I wanted to have a kid stay in a store overnight. And I wanted
it to be creepy. Given how creepy mannequins are, I'm not surprised what happened. Though I hope you were.

The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies

I started with the idea of a pair of kids getting into a pepper eating contest. There's just something about hot peppers that makes people abandon common sense. I guess the same could be said for lots of other things that inspire people to compete. I like hot peppers, but I always try to stop eating them somewhere between tears and flames.

Just Like Me

I remember seeing a magazine ad for a place where they make dolls that looks just like people. That struck me as potentially creepy. I definitely wouldn't want to be anywhere near a doll that looked like me. Naturally, anything creepy is worth thinking about for story inspirations. I combined that idea with one about people who treat their dolls a little too much like they are real.

What's Eating the Vegans?

I know lots of vegetarians. I like them, but I also like making fun of them, because I'm really not a nice person, and I'm envious of their excellent health. I also thought it would be fun to put vegetarians in the middle of a Thanksgiving dinner. I'd originally envisioned an attack of giant vegetables, but common sense prevailed and I took a different direction.

Let's Have a Big Hand for Gerald

Once in a while, I like to write a story that is flat out absurd. (See “Throwaways” in
Invasion of the Road Weenies.
)
My spark here was, “What if a kid's hand kept growing bigger?” Actually, the fact that Gerald's hand keeps growing isn't the absurd part. For me, his mom's reaction is what makes the story deliciously bizarre. The nice thing about what-ifs is that an idea could turn into so many different types of stories. On another day, Gerald might have found himself elbow deep in dark horror, or performing some sort of heroic high five. This time around, I sent him somewhere else.

Bird Shot

I came up with the ending first. That's obviously the ideal way to make sure the story will have an ending. It's easier to work backwards by asking, “How did things get this way?” than to work forward by asking, “What happened next?” On the other hand, if I don't know the ending when I start writing, there's a better chance it will be a nice surprise for me and for the reader. Either way, it's my job to make sure the path to the ending is as satisfying as the ending itself. This means I have to make the ending feel both believable and satisfying. (If a counselor showed up and took away the BB gun, that would be believable, but not very satisfying. If the ground opened up and swallowed the kid, that would be satisfying, but not believable.)

The Princess and the Pea Brain

I'm pleased to admit that the whole idea was inspired by the title. Wordplay is constantly dancing through my head. When I thought up the title, it wasn't hard to imagine what kind of fate would happen to a pea-brained prince if he found himself in this sort of story.

Petro-fied

It's hard not to think about gas and oil these days. This is another case where I knew from the start how the story would end. I just didn't know the rest of it right away. True confession—I was doing the final edit of the story, and these notes, right after five inches of snow fell. I just filled the tank of my snowblower. Right now, my fingers smell like gasoline. I would never buy a snowblower, but my favorite lawn weenie gave me his when he moved to Florida.

Time Out

This one was totally unplanned. I just tossed a couple kids in a room with a time machine to see what would happen. Time travel can get pretty tricky for writers (and readers). The classic example of a time-travel paradox is this: What if you went back in time and prevented your grandfather from meeting your grandmother? Would you cease to exist? Nobody really has a good answer for this. My story went in a different direction, but it is still probably one of the harder ones to wrap your mind around.

Galactic Zap

This was sort of a combined what-if and ending idea. The what-if part gave me the idea for a game that was actually a screening test. At the same time, the reason for the screening gave me the ending. I wasn't sure whether to include this story, since the story “Inquire Within” from my previous collection also dealt with a screening test, though in an entirely different way. That's actually the greatest challenge of putting together a collection—making sure that any particular sort of twist doesn't happen too often. I decided to
keep this one in because I love the last line. If you want to read the best novel ever written about kids fighting aliens, check out
Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card.

The Taste of Terror

Yup—another what-if. “What if there was a witch who ate screams?” In my first draft, the main character didn't survive. But that didn't feel right. The story was so dark, I felt it needed a happy ending.

The Cat Almost Gets a Bath

I read a magazine article about bathing cats to reduce allergies. Having actually bathed a cat once or twice for various reasons (don't try this at home), I knew how dangerous and frantic an exercise it could become. It struck me as an ideal topic for a funny story.

Yesterday Tomorrow

This is really another version of a time-travel story, though quite different from “Time Out.” I'm working on a third time-travel story, with an entirely different sort of ending, but I figured I'd save that for the next collection. This one began with, “What if a kid woke up a day earlier each day?” That, as interesting as it might be, didn't strike me as enough, by itself, for a story. But, as I thought about what his life would be like, and realized the things he could do, I saw the chance for a strong ending.

Take a Whack at This

Another story that began as a what-if. I'm actually quite fond of spiders. But the ones that show up in my stories tend
not to be all that pleasant. I figure E. B. White has already given us the ultimate nice spider, but there's lots of room to explore the icky side.

King of the Hill

I started with the line that is spoken by the hill. I knew I wanted to put it in a story. At first, I thought the whole thing would just be about some kids playing king of the hill. Then I realized I had to make the story a bit larger.

Book Banning

Writers spend a lot of time dealing with the issue of book banning. So it's not surprising that I was thinking about those two words. Whenever I think about words, I end up playing with them. I wondered what would happen if, instead of being banned, the books did the banning. I have a feeling my librarian friends are going to especially enjoy this one.

Braces

Given how much it cost for my daughter to get braces, there was no way I wasn't going to write a story about it sooner or later. In this case, it was later. She's had her braces off for years. But I still remember sitting with her in the waiting room. And I still remember way back in the dark ages when I got braces myself. But that's another story.

Turkey Calls

I wondered what would happen if a kid made a turkey call and it called something else. Of course, that's just the start of the process. I needed to make it seem reasonable that the
call wouldn't work right, and maybe give a hint that whatever came might not be a bird.

Reel

This began with, “What if a kid felt everything that happened in a movie?” The first time I started to write that story, I got sidetracked and ended up writing about a kid who sees himself in a play (“Alexander Watches a Play”). This time, I stuck with the idea.

Bad Luck

I liked the idea of personifying an aspect of fate. (That sentence was an attempt to raise the reading level of this book. This would be a good time to put the book down and say to whoever told you not to buy such a silly book, “Hey—I'm learning about personification as a rhetorical device. This book is very educational, even if there are Weenies on the cover.”) There have been lots of stories where Death is a character. I wanted to spend some time with something less drastic. Bad Luck seemed like the perfect choice.

Rattled Nerves

I'd been talking with someone about what kinds of dangerous snakes live in Pennsylvania. That conversation settled into my brain and led me to think about a kid who believes he's being chased by a venomous snake. Then, I had to think up something that would be mistaken for a snake, but would be much worse. (I guess I could have gone in the opposite direction and had it turn out he was running from something that wasn't dangerous.) That's where the fun stuff happens. Writing this type of story is sort of like doing
a magic trick. I have to keep you from noticing the surprise until the end.

Smart Little Suckers

The idea for the insects came first. I knew they would make someone smarter. I didn't know what would happen after that. As for the rolling-over part, I actually did make that mistake in one of my early video games,
The Challenge of Nexar
for the Atari 2600. After I programmed it and the cartridge got shipped to stores, someone complained that when he won one hundred ships, the game ended. I never expected anyone to do that well, so I hadn't bothered to make sure the number didn't wrap back to zero. I fixed it, and we made more cartridges. This just shows that any mistakes you make can come in handy later on.

Overdue onto Others

Every time I go to my local library in Nazareth, they seem to have new things you can borrow. This is great, but it got me thinking about what sort of things they could offer in the future. At the same time, I was playing around with an idea that was inspired by a sign I saw at a computer show. The sign read:
WE BUY AND SELL MEMORIES.
I only wrote a paragraph or two for that one, but it helped lead me toward the concept of doing something with personalities.

Put on Your Happy Face

This is sort of a companion piece to my story “Mr. HooHaa!” from
The Curse of the Campfire Weenies.
It looks at the general creepiness of clowns from the opposite
direction. I'm not afraid of clowns, but I definitely like spiders better.