I read a lot of science mags, the popular stuff, not hardcore journals. Ideas come from there. I get little ideas, things that are cool, but not enough to make a book worth the Junkies' time. These things accumulate and kick around the brain. Then I walk down the street, drive, I see things and often think "well yeah, I see that, but what if it could do THIS instead?" That's when the scientific stuff pops up again. It's like a giant cyclotron in my swollen head, full of swirling ideas that eventually collide and combine into heavier elements. Eventually 5-6 things come together, and there's the original idea. -Scott-

Scott, I am interested in knowing when you found that writing came easy for you. Is this something you have always wanted to do for a living? Or is it a hobbie that has really taken off for you since podcasting came along. Sheryl E.

do you like have to be in one speccific place/spot to get the juices flowing or is it just like anywhere? ~Do You Know How Many Birthdays There Are In a Year?.......Hundreads....Litearly..Hundreads,~

I was wondering if you had anything beyond an 8th grade reading/writing ability? I'm joking! Seriously, what's your educational background? Any litterary props to the peeps in the cheap seats?

It is my favorite of all your stuff. I love football #1, but I also love Scifi and the detail you put into the creation and backstories of the races is just amazing. Where did the idea come from? Peace... Nite

how do you come up with such diverse and believeable races? do you plan out the creature first than think up back story; personalities home planets or do you think up a creature to fit a niche?

When are we going to see some Quyth VS. Chupacabra???

I am interested what do you write with. Do you start with notes on paper or is it all on computer. I have a bias to Textedit in OS X, because of its simplicity and Omni Out liner for trying to organize my self. So what tools do you the great creative genius of the 21century use to releace your will on the world

Every two-bit myth has a home on the SciFi channel's original movies. Wow, stinker central. I don't think we'll see any Sigler monster up against traditional monsters. I'm wondering when they'll get around to "The Easter Bunny's Deadly Revenge."

I usually start from the single-cell concept and evolve the creature in my head. I want to create original creatures, but logical, scientifically sound creatures. And I'm not of the school that thinks everything is going to evolve into a bipedal humanoid. People who come up with those kind of "aliens" aren't even capable of looking around the planet and seeing the amazing diversity of form we have. So the aliens usually have a few things in common: 

1) There are no "super predator" sentient beings: It's humanity's weaknesses that drove the evolution of intelligenge as an evolutionary advantage. If we had big teeth, big claws, armored skin, et cetera, why would we need to evolve intelligence? It's our vulnerabilities and weaknesses that drove developments like weapons, clothing, tools, etc. So the aliens may have unique physical characteristics, but the sentient ones all have ample weaknesses and no "super powers."

2)  They do not look like people with crap on their face. I loath the "Star Trek" aliens. I know most of that is due to budget, which is cool for TV, but in books, the aliens don't have to look like people. I mean, come on, people, open a fucking science book from time to time.

3) They do not look like "wolf men" or "lizard men." The idiotic concept that out there, somewhere, another planet also evolved dinosaurs, but they didn't have the extinction event so the dinosaurs (or insert other animal here) grew to sentience is retarded.  The odds of another planet producing a "reptilian race" similar to Earth reptiles is astronimical. Aliens evolve their own base structure from which species branch out. I make that base structure something unique, and make it something other than your standard bipedal quadraped. 

4) Hatred is an evolutionary advantage: the concept that someday we will have this magical society where everyone gets along is a crock - that's the land of happy ponies, it doesn't exist, it will never exist. If we hate each other so much, and we all basically look the same, imagine how we'll feel about something that looks more like a nasty cricket than a person ... and, most importantly, imagine how they will feel about us. Racial tension, or species tension, really helps to establish the aliens as "real" to us, because that's something we see on a daily basis (if not in person, in the news, movies, history books, etc).   

 

Theres always 2006's "Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!" That looks interesting. SciFi lost a lot of my respect when the contract ended with Mystery Science Theater 3000......... Tears abounded, but luckily there are tons of MST3K episodes running around the internetz.

See, we all thought that there was some kind of cannibalism involved in there somehow. I mean, I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but now we all know that you consume ideas from other people... freaky... Do you use your bizarre powers to kill people, or is it all done by your junkie hordes? :p ------- Whole Lot of Nonsense PodCast - http://www.wholelotofnonsense.org UUCSH Sunday Services - http://uucsh.libsyn.com Follow Me - http://www.twitter.com/bpende Pownce on Me - http://www.pownce.com/bpende

Actually, given their penchant for putting colons in the titles of their movies, it's probably be something like "Deadly Sunday: The Easter Bunny's Revenge". My theory is the use of the colon is a warning to us all, if there's a colon in the title, the movie itself resembles the contents of one. -- The ways of the Lord are often dark but never pleasant.

the Easter bunny has always firghten me... and if the Sci-fiChannel does a killer bunny, I wold expect to see John Cleese bring suit as I believe that Monty Phyon was the first to do a killer bunny[ with mean nasty toothies}

Excellent insight.. { yes like a bore scope}

What can I say, I'm a connoisseur of the very worst the film industry has to offer. I am hopelessly hooked on the SciFi Channel Original Movies. -- The ways of the Lord are often dark but never pleasant.

Sigler = god

Check out Scrivener (only for Mac, sorry). With the kind of complicated plots used by people like me and J.C. Hutchins, it's hard to keep track of all the threads. What's worse is when you move or delete one scene, it has a domino effect to muck up your continuity. I use Scrivener because each scene is its own little file, and you can move them around at will without cutting and pasting. It also gives you a cool "notecard" feature to see each scene, you can color-code the scenes however you like, and it gives you a big outline feature. It's hard to work with at times, and about 2-3 times a day I wonder if I should go back to one long MS Word doc, but sticking with it for NOCTURNAL. 

I thought/hoped you were of that opinion, your aliens were too believable to have been spontaneous. Does that mean you have good scientific explanations for all the races attributes (floating Harah, radiation proof quyth) I'd love to hear them =). I also agree with the lame humanoid alien plans suresly the star trek guys could have dressed up dogs or parrots or something.

Since You're so active with the net...Email,Twitter,facebook,IM etc etc when the hell do you find the time to write? I follow your twitter messages... goes something like this: a) Ok, I qiut my FT job, and I'm going to write b) I wrote somet stuff, (20 twitter messages) c) I'm going out for coffee (more twitter messages, more posts) 800 Pages Long 30-40 episodes - 8 months .. Bring IT Time to make the donuts? 6:25 am :)

There aren't any rules saying life has to conform. People are too close minded and try to add commonalities to their "aliens" to make them more comprehensible.

I think they are a few different ways that Scott comes up with his ideas which are as follows: 1. Scott is the devil and therefore has no problem coming up with sick and twisted and oh so good stories 2. He is working for the devil 3. He made a deal with the devil :P

It is known that ideas comes from a post office box in Schnectady, NY. Specifically - a post office box in the 12345 zip code. And since that particular zip code is for the main plant for General Electric, then we all know where the ideas come from.....

The Irishman from Ohio"I never Get to Get it!"-Wacko Warner The original myth of the Easter Bunny...was Celtic. It was a giant Bunny that was believed to be twice the size of a man in that time period. It was an ageless demon thing that grew its strength from the evil of man. It gained its most power from evil children. It was goud children to do more acts of evil with sweet foods. When the children were "ripe" It would eat their heads off and their souls would rot in Its belly. The myth is about 3,000 years old. The strongest Celtics were nomadic and covered most of Europe, Scotland, and Ireland. No bull shit.

Scott, do you get ideas for future characters and plots as you develope your current project? writing notes and stories for future developement, which might mean you have several things going at once, or do you totally concentrate on one idea and project at a time? I guess you could write with each hand at the same time. When are you going to get out of that closet and get a real office,? oops that is another question.