BTS: A Tale of Two Stories

Tomorrow, I'll release a pair of Trust Machine stories with a single origin. They are Dude Gals and Sister Bros. It started maybe six months ago when I had an idea about a bunch of guys sharing an apartment who have a tradition of going down to the Venn machine once a month, becoming women, and then hitting a bar to see what happens next. Worst case outcome, bum a few free drinks off some guys. That's essentially Dude Gals.

I wrote a short description of my intention and named the four men and then named the four women they become. Made some notes about what kind of people each woman would meet/hook up with and then set the treatise aside for another day. Setting it aside was probably because of looming deadlines for other stories. Within days I had the same idea. But I had kind of forgotten the first treatise. So I wrote the first scene of Sister Bros through to them tormenting Amanda of Window Dressing.

Time passes and at some point I stumble upon the original treatise for Dude Gals. Now I have two stories with the same setup: dudes get together to become women. Maybe I can combine them? Nope, nope, nope. The idiots in Sister Bros are not friends with the probably older guys in Dude Gals. I end up writing the intro to Dude Gals up until they're venned and they have a chat with Amanda from Window Dressing. And once again, looming deadlines causes both of these to be set aside. (Probably some Ted's Doll stuff the first time and Hard To Look At the second time.)

April 1, in the midst of writing about 3,000 words of Ted's Dolls Season 4, I also churned out over 6,000 words between the two guys become gals so they can party stories. While the story that developed in Dude Gals felt good. It occasionally spawned a stupid idea which was generally perfect for the other story. I could not believe the antics of the Sister Bros. I don't think I've ever written a loveable idiots story. (I know they're idiots. But are they loveable?)

I'm still not satisfied with the end of Dude Gals. I could probably run that story out to 15,000 words if I wanted to. But diminishing returns tells me it's fine now at just over 5,000. Hopefully assigning it a release date will curtail me adding a few hundred words here and there and it getting padded to excessive lengths. So Dude Gals will appear 5/11

I could easily extend Sister Bros even more. I can just see them.... No, no. Sister Bros will appear 5/18 while I'm in Europe.

(Oh, yeah. I'll be on vacation starting 5/15. Hopefully nothing goes wrong with the planned releases.)