This is MJ. I'm an author. I'm an artist. I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at mjmunoz.com
Welcome to
Story Over Everything episode 19, Elite Elegy
So I'm gonna be talking about a couple things. This is a
Fabula Machina or story machine
episode of
Story Over Everything. I'm gonna be sharing with you an update on my writing projects and then I will be talking to you about
Story idea I came up with you can use it as a prompt if you want to for your own writing or just something to
Think about I actually
Came up with an idea on my own and
Made it into a prompt and then I processed the prompt through a little something something and I'll share with you the results of that
in a little bit, so
Getting back to the first part of this. I'm gonna talk about my updates on my writing projects
So I have the grow bug series of books
five children's picture books all inspired by
tokusatsu that'd be Godzilla Ultraman Super Sentai Kamen Rider and
Digimon and
Because that's the sort of thing I'm into and I thought I'd like to have cool children's picture books about these
So I wrote five books and I'm pretty satisfied with them. I've
continued to tweak them and I even came up with an idea for a
For a
Bigger book that encompasses these five
stories of the five like hero bugs when the grow bug is a basically a guardian angel that helps children to
be protected from and saved from dangers in the night of
various types there's
supernatural
Basically supernatural challenges or foes they face. They're not all the same thing
they're all various types of dangers that kids face and they have different purposes and different causes and
different goals, but ultimately they all victimize children in order to benefit themselves and
Because of that I recently developed the name for them, which is Hob-not kind of like Hobgoblin
Phrase hob is an old term
Old English old French old German and it refers to
Basically like a night terror. So at one point early early on in my drafts of some of these stories I
Had thought about calling them
Terrorers or figments or you know, you know night mirrors KNI GHD nightmares things like that
which I still think is a fun idea, but
I've generally called them now all hob-nots and I like I said, I've developed that
word recently and they're
explorers in the night who explore
terror sort of of children, so
yeah, it's a I think it's a cool set of books and
Like I said, I'm working on them and as I've developed my
Larger manuscript that goes into the like well each book is basically told from the perspective
Well, it's not really from the perspective of the child, but it's told
What the child is the hero the main character. They're the focus and it's they're all told in third person and
The grow bugs make appearances in the books and they're
Helping to save the day, but they're not 100% what the books about it's about how these children
with the help of these grow bugs can overcome these things and I
As I spent more time thinking about these stories
I thought oh, I kind of like to explore what's it like for the grow bugs in this
You know if I'm creating this world with multiple books kids
In different places all being negatively affected by these hobnots then what is
You know, what's the deal with that? Why do they exist? Why do the grow bugs exist who set this up and
As I'm a believer in a divine power and divine source
I decided to include that as an aspect of my
storytelling and I have the idea that basically like I said, these things are guardian angels, but I kind of
Meant that literally that they're sent by God
Whoever he is in your estimation because I you know leave a vague and open for interpretation
for
You know, and he sends these things out in order to protect
innocent children, which I think is a cool thing, but
basically what I've been doing is
Rewriting each of the five grow bug books
with the five grow bug guardians who are the heroes or
You know helpers in those books
in a
I've been rewriting those stories from their perspective and I've been inserting those into this overall story
I have of a fresh group of grow bug cadets who are training and
Being raised to grow up and be either
soldier support or like a seer profit type of
Bug like they differentiate and specialize down into different
Groupings that all have different strengths. They've you know have things in common that they share
But they have different strengths that distinguish them from each other and enable them to do different things together
And when they work together, they can acquire different abilities
when they work together they can accomplish a lot more so I
have kind of this militaristic vibe to it where
they're you know guardians, they're called guardians keepers and
seers and
the guardians fight the terrors the seers kind of handle columns between groups of
between groups of grow bugs as well as seeing when a kid is in danger needs help and dispatching the guardians to help them with that and
And the keepers awful offer I guess you could say vital support to their fellow grow bugs
So they you know raise food they raise the kids they might have healing magic or powers and things like that
So that they can help
injured new guardians or seers or you know, whoever among their ranks and
That's kind of the idea I have and I've just as I've developed that idea
For this book that collects their stories
and has an overall narrative which I call grow bug tales I
have had to go back and revise the other grow bug books because as I've learned more about
the I don't know society and culture and you know character of these
Various grow bug characters. I've had to go back or I've taken the opportunity to go back and
inform
specifically
some details in the books
the individual books of the you know, the kid and the grow bug is my little code name for those five grow bug picture books and
It's been a lot of fun. I've really enjoyed that work and I've enjoyed the process and
I've learned a lot along the way. I've kind of talked about that already what I learned from writing these grow bug books
The the grow book picture books in rapid succession, so I won't go over that but I will
Let you know that you can find that in the
The catalog of the story over everything episodes. So if you're curious, you can go ahead and find that
that and more is at MJMunoz.com and I
would
like to continue by saying that
The progress where I'm at is I am in I'm on the third grow bug retelling and
for whatever reason or you know grow bug kid in the grow bug book retelling in this story and
basically, I've decided to have these you know grow bug cadets being raised up and trained in whatever in
Various ways they're being trained physically and they have to accomplish tasks and you know cultivate discipline and
Strength and toughness and things like that through life experience
But I also believe in story as a vehicle for change
and I believe in story as a
platform for
education and
More just you know, I think stories are really important. So I have this kind of like oral tradition type thing going on here where
the
idea is as part of their training the young grow bugs get to hear war stories basically from older grow bugs and learn lessons from them, so
I'm
You know having to learn from them
You know having the heroes of these grow bug books tell their stories firsthand and the first two are pretty straightforward in this
The third one that I'm working on I decided I would well the actual it's the longest grow bug
Kid in the grow bug book. I have so far like it's really like it's I think 2,000 words or something like that
Maybe closer to 2,500 which is not the standard length for a children's picture book at all
it's you know quite long in comparison to what is regularly done today, which I think I've seen recently four to five hundred words I
thought a year or two ago that it was eight hundred to a thousand words and
Anyway, I've safely doubled that so I don't know what I'm gonna do with that. But I
Actually had so much of the story
Involve the kid herself and so little of it involving the grow bug that I decided I'm going to
Well, I'm still undecided as to how I'm gonna tell that story, but I have maybe even a
Another book that I could you know short story that could spin off telling the story of this grow bug trying to infiltrate this
This barrier, let me just put it that way barrier blocking her from getting to the kid and and helping her so
and it's been pretty interesting and
It's funny how much I'm figuring all this out as I go along and as I'm figuring this out
Trying to figure out how to turn myself into a successful author and I keep hearing email email email
Email building an email list is the thing you want to do and it's a key to success and it's old and it's not
Spicy or alluring or hip or in or on trend or anything like that, you know
Tik Tok is the current thing. That's a big deal and
You know who knows how soon that may change. Apparently they're gonna be starting their own
publishing imprint called eighth note publishing and
You know, who knows what's gonna happen there? So, you know
Platforms come and go social media comes and goes but if you have an email list, you know emails a protocol basically
The protocol will not come and go protocol has been here for
It's you know, 2023 as I say this what's email been around for 40 years since the probably 1990
So we go 90 to 2000
2010 to 2022, okay 30
33 years, let's see. No has been around. I think it's actually older than that. But you know more widely in use is
You know the 30 years might be about right. Anyway
That protocol will
Change and will permutate through different ways
And will permutate through different things, but it'll stay the same and it'll keep working
It'll keep being used and so I took two
short online courses classes introductions
to email list building
guides to email list building from two different
Individuals or organizations, I won't be specific. I won't name but I'll just call them a party a and party B
I found it interesting that well, I found both party a and party B's
explanation of
why you need email list and and how important is to cultivate that and grow it and
You know use that to sell your books to those people on your email list and then
you know sell them subsequent books in your series or direct them to new books that you're writing and
Again, I thought this was you know, fascinating interesting and the presentation from both
parties was well done and
and
It was enlightening and it really made me feel motivated to
To go ahead and get started on building out my email list and something that I like that they both said
No, that well, I mean it's affirming to me. So it feels comfortable. Therefore. I liked it, right?
Is that?
Even if you don't have a book out now
It is prudent to go ahead and start assembling a reading list or an email start building your email list
so that when you're ready to launch your books you
can
Send your books to you can send the announcement of your launch to people on your email list and
That's great. And there was a one of the one of the courses. There's a method shared for increasing your Increasing eyes on your books and
turning that into more people to subscribe and then turning those subscribers into
People who turn around and give you greater exposure and it was this really interesting cycle using email sequencing
You know where you can actually
Set up your emails so that when somebody subscribes to whatever list you have you can have various lists too that you can
Have a track for them to go on basically where they get the same everybody gets the same sequence of emails in the same order
you know sequentially from when they join with you and
That that was really neat especially with how one of the authors was talking about how to leverage that and use that
In part to create yourself a wider
You know base of readers potential audience and people to
To buy your book and again turn other people onto your stuff as well. So very interesting
I do have a preference for one person's presentation or one for one party's presentation over the others
But that doesn't matter to you but something else that I found interesting
Is that the way I got notified of these is that I was somehow on an email list for both these people
I think they like a guest email their guest posted on another party's party C on party C's email
Fire Bolton whatever that I'm part of so
You know, I believe that the whole email thing can work because it's working on me. These people are literally using their
list and the email process to get me interested in what they're
providing and
honestly, both of them finished with a sales pitch and
One sales pitch was more attractive than the other but again, that doesn't matter and I didn't buy either but
One I definitely
heavily
The first one I heard I thought well
Let me wait to see what party B will say and what their sales pitch is gonna be because I feel
like they're probably gonna have a sales pitch too and
Again, there's nothing wrong with that. They're creating funnels. They're creating contacts. They're trying to get themselves in front of customers to
Support their livelihood and that's exactly what I want to do
So I'm trying to learn from them and it's just it's been a very interesting process trying to learn this
and I have resources from both of them that they offered for free and I will look at those review them and
try to implement them and
Eventually set up my own, you know, please sometimes within a month or two
Set up my own email list and start building that up so that when I am ready to publish I'll have people to go to and
People to get reviews from and such
It's part of the plan
so
anyway, there's that aspect of of this episode this edition of
story of everything so I
want to go ahead and move away from that now and
talk about going to
The fabulous machina section and again this I
I this is created by me. Don't be confused because I'm gonna be using chad gpt3 later and you'll hear from that
but I
Did all this work myself this first bit of work myself?
so I want to come over the story with keywords, I actually came up with these keywords after the fact, but I'm gonna
Operate a little differently going forward the keywords are war decentralized peace anti-war law and justice
so those are keywords or key concepts in this story and I
Put those all together into a prompt. I guess you could call it called elite elegy and this is what it is
Communications tech is no longer able to be censored nearly a dozen
Heads of state have been arrested and executed for war crimes
They have ordered a decentralized network of hackers and computer engineers orchestrated these events under the direction of an eclectic group of grassroots
Activists with one goal uniting them
depower the oligarchs
So elite elegy can be taken in multiple directions. What would you do with these ideas? What would you do with this prompt?
I would turn to the elegy into an actions roller story of revenge called cyber wolf and
Here's my pitch real quick short pitch a veteran and his team are tasked with capturing
The government officials who lied their country into war under false pretenses. How did that get discovered?
well because of the
Leaks done by the hacking group and whatnot
So here's the synopsis of that story that I came up with the kid
I've never done this ever come with a character for this before so this was all fresh for me today
What'll you pay? Yeah, what'll you pick a rero was almost ready to put the past behind him?
The war had cost his brother his life and him and I he rested recovered and then kept moving
He found work with a private security firm a good fit. It still hurt, but he kept moving
Until the leaks destroyed his life for a second time it had all been a lie classified documents openly admitted it
Private messages that were supposed to have been scrubbed and destroyed were found and clear for all to see
The war had been a lie not a mistake, but a fabrication
Guadalupe and Rigo his brother had believed in the cause they wanted to be heroes, but they had been pawns
The politicians tried to bury it, but they couldn't the truth stayed out and the people demanded justice
Guadalupe wanted revenge the guilty fled and dug into fortified positions meant to protect them
Guadalupe pulled out or pulled every connection he could to get assigned to the extraction team
So that's what I had mine that's what I put together for this story and the name cyber wolf and
Some other ideas for this story. I had worked on or come up with
I know a year or two ago and just kind of logged it in my memory
I logged it some notes
I couldn't find them today
But I worked off of what I had memorized and I just kind of wrote this fresh new approach and I gave him a name
And gave his brother a name and that's the work I did on it today now
I asked chat GPT-3 to spin elite elegy into 10 different book proposals and
This is what it gave me and these I have not read any of these I
Skimmed over them to make sure they're all short
so they're all just like a couple sentences and it came up with a title you keep the title for each one and a
Genre or subgenre for it. So here we go
book one
unsilenced revolt
dystopian thriller
synopsis in a dystopian future communication technology becomes impossible to censor a
charismatic hacker and her team leveraged this newfound power to expose the war crimes committed by heads of state as
They execute their plan they encounter unexpected challenges and face grave consequences and their quest to dismantle the reign of the oligarchs
Okay, so I don't know who the lady is if it just decided to pick a gender or sex whatever and say this man
This is a woman whatever so we'll see if it ping-pongs
I asked it to kind of do an outline with the prompt that I made
and what a loop is both a man's name and a woman's name because
That's the way it works for some reason
I guess it's gender neutral because the the way it ends but like it sounds like a woman's name
And you know doesn't everybody ever feel it deal up a anyway, so moving on to book two
Whispers of justice which is a political drama synopsis when a communications tech no sorry when communications tech becomes uncensored a whistleblower leaks classified documents
revealing the war crimes committed by powerful heads of state as public outrage grows a determined investigative journalist races against time to uncover the truth and bring the
perpetrators to justice facing threats and obstacles along the way
Sounds pretty cool actually
book three
Invisible strings, which is a techno thriller
Synopsis a brilliant computer engineer creates a revolutionary central or decentralized network capable of bypassing
censorship as this network gains popularity a mysterious group of hackers joins forces to expose the war crimes of
Heads of state the engineer finds herself caught in a dangerous web of intrigue and must protect her invention from those who seek to control it
I had no idea it would be an invention and in fact I kind of think that violates the principle of it being
Decentralized, but you know it's trying maybe the protocol
Maybe she's got some sort of device that she uses you could come up with something to justify that if you wanted to work with
That in fact which you know I'm not ready to at this point all right number four shadows of retribution
This is an action-packed adventure
Synopsis a retired special forces operative yeah boy haunted by the war crimes he witnessed
Oh, yeah
Is drawn into a mission of vengeance orchestrated by a decentralized network of activists and hackers hackers with an eclectic team
At his side he embarks on a globetrotting journey to hunt down and bring the heads of state to justice
Facing perilous encounters and personal demons along the way
Yeah, I would read that that sounds super cool
Book five echoes of freedom which is science fiction synopsis set in a futuristic society where communication technology cannot be censored a group of rebels
fights against an oppressive government utilizing their technological skills and a decentralized network they
Exposed the war crimes of the heads of state sparking a revolution that will change the course of history and determine the fate of humanity
Book six web of shadows. It's just a psychological thriller synopsis a brilliant but reclusive computer programmer
Discoveres the uncensored is it could be girl again the uncensored nature of communication
Technology discovers the uncensored nature of communication technology obsessed with justice
He manipulates the decentralized network to expose the war crimes committed by heads of state as he delves deeper into the dark web
He becomes entangled in a psychological game of cat and mouse that blurs the lines between truth and deception
That's cool book seven code of resistance political suspense
political suspense
political suspense, huh? synopsis a disillusioned political aides stumbles upon evidence of war crimes while researching high a high-profile scandal
she teams up with a group of activists and hackers who utilize the decentralized network to reveal the truth as
They face relentless opposition from powerful figures. They must navigate a dangerous landscape of politics and espionage to dismantle the oligarchs hold on power
chapter 8 whistleblowers redemption legal thrill I
Don't know why but that sounds like a romance novel title to me
anyway
synopsis a jaded lawyer takes on a seemingly impossible case when a whistleblower exposes the war crimes of heads of state as
She fights against powerful forces in the courtroom
She uncovers a network of activity of activists and hackers who have orchestrated the exposure with her reputation on and life on the line
She seeks justice and redemption against all odds
Book nine hacktivist uprising young adult adventure
synopsis in a near-future world where communication tech is uncensored a teenager with exceptional hacking skills
discovers evidence of war crimes committed by heads of state
Alongside a diverse group of young activists and computer prodigies. They form a decentralized network to take down the corrupt leaders their journeys become a thrilling
Coming of age adventure with high stakes consequences. That actually sounds pretty okay
That sounds pretty okay
I especially like the idea of the people becoming the decentralized network because I think that's how it'll work
If you I am interested in that idea if you didn't gather already a book 10 last and final
It's the same thing
digital anarchy cyberpunk noir
Synopsis in a gritty cyberpunk world a street savvy hacker with a dark past
Uncovers a conspiracy involving the heads of state and their war crimes teaming up with a mysterious group of underground rebels
They exploit the unfiltered
Communication tech to expose the truth as the lines blur between justice and revenge they navigate a neon lit underworld
filled with corruption and danger neon lit
Okay. Oh, yeah, I mean that actually sounds pretty okay, too. I have questions
It's a little vague but like if you read synopsis synopsis of a lot of books you can
Interpret that synopsis are going different ways and you could say huh?
I never imagined that that would happen in this book based on just the synopsis
So yeah, I thought those were pretty cool
I thought those were pretty cool indeed and a lot of fun, and I mean it's you know proof that I
Just like the power of writing the power of creative creativity is that you can take any ideas I
Basically just wanted like a veteran like I have anti-war outlook on life
like I would prefer for us not to get into useless senseless wars and for young men and women to die for no reason especially
because it seems like for the last I don't know a couple decades a few decades at least if not more in my country of origin
The bloodshed has been for the profit
for the profit a few and for the detriment of all or many and
the amount of blood spilled in the name of my country's foreign interests is
revolting and repulsive to me, and I would love it to stop and I want the truth to
be able to be the thing that stops it, but the truth doesn't always work like that and
right now the truth is hidden, but I'm
aware of different protocols and
Technologies that are being developed being worked on being explored right now that are
gonna change that and
The possibility of what could happen what our future could look like
in a world where the truth can't just be hidden by
The people it would hurt by the evil people it would hurt
It excites me and it brings me hope and
It makes me long even more for justice and
You know I believe in the power of storytelling and there's this mantra of
Support the troops and I would argue that I'm supporting the troops by trying to not get them thrown into
the meat grinder of endless stupid war on behalf of
Other people that they're tricked and fooled into and all sorts of things
I was fooled into supporting wars that I now find evil and were fabricated and I've
I'll stop there right now, but um
Yeah this
The idea of creating a story with a character you could empathize with who would
learn the lesson of
Being lied into war learn to be cautious about that thing and use the skill that they learn to
Bring the actual culprits the actual villains in the case to justice
It feels very cathartic just saying that I
Feel a little better and
You know it's a fictional story and it's a fictional story
I feel a little better and you know it's a fiction. It's not true
But if it could become a popular fiction, and it could stir the hearts of many people
What would they do? What would they learn? How would that affect their lives going forward?
I don't know but again
that's the power of storytelling that I'm interested in and that I recognize and that I feel myself being affected by and
Yeah, that's why I wanted to share that with you
So anyway, I this got weirdly personal and I didn't mean it to
I don't know that that will happen all the time in story over everything, but you know this is who I am and these are things that
Spark my interest and these are things that
You know this is my perspective on storytelling, so if you're into that then I guess you know stick around for more
Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and get out of here
This went longer than I'd expected and I need to attend to other matters so until next time this is MJ signing out I
Hope you enjoyed that go to MJMunoz.com to leave any questions comments or other feedback you might have
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