This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
This is Story Over Everything episode 22, Grow Bug Tales Whip or Work in Public, chapter 7 and
chapter, actually Children's Picture Book number 4, Rewrite. So I talk about it later on so I'll
just let you go through the experience with me. It's going to be a lot of audio for me in different
places, dictating or speaking notes and thinking about the story aloud into the microphone, into
the phone and sending that to you. So that's what you're going to get in this episode and by the end
of it I have some really cool progress that I've made and I'm going to tell you all about that at
the end of the episode. So I will let it evolve and then do the recap at the end and let it be
that for now and that's it. So I'm starting to do my audio recording for transcription of chapter 7
of Grow Bug Tales. This is the beginning of Grow Bug Tales. Grow Bug Tales chapter 7 features Hiss.
It is the retelling from Hiss' perspective of Cat and the Grow Bug for some background.
And I guess this is spoilers for Cat and the Grow Bug but this book comes out before then. It tells
the other side of the story. It's not really intended for the children's audience plus there's
the story beyond it and I'm telling a totally different perspective which I think will be okay.
Anyway in Cat and the Grow Bug, Hiss is a moth grow bug who is actually in need of help from somebody
and she's in need of a friend to help her see through what she's stuck in and basically she
was infected by, infected and affected by a spore from a... from a spud of despair I believe is what
I called it. I'm not looking at my notes, this is all off memory and she became a spectator. I think
or spooktator that's what it is. So she's a lumpy looking weird ghost thing trapped in a labyrinth
of despair sprouted by the spud of despair spore getting in her and blossoming. So she's in a state
where as this spooktator she is utterly sad and lonely and depressed basically and you can even
say she's a bit of a couch potato and she can't get up and do these things on her own and instead
this maladaptive behavior takes place where she attempts to capture people who come into her way
or who you know happen across her path and the goal is to take happy memories from them and feed off
of them but the problem is that affected as she is by the spore of the spud of despair and in the
state of being a mere spooktator even consuming the good wholesome happy memories of others is not
enough to bring her joy and happiness. It may last for a moment but it can't go beyond that and that's
really sad. That's really sad and I guess I'm sort of talking about depression but also friendship
and teamwork with the story because in that book Kat feels excluded and alone because her cousins
who happen to be the other grow bug kids Rex, Ava, and Harmony they're over for a sleepover
and it's not going the way she wants and she feels that they are excluding her and that leads her
to a negative emotion spiral which is seized upon by this spooktator and then all of them are drawn
into the spooktator's labyrinth and in there you know she attempts to harvest memories from them but it will never work
and it ultimately the kids escape through teamwork and helping each other and the grow bugs come and rescue them
and then Kat who also escapes along with her cousins and their grow bugs is outside of the labyrinth
and the grow bugs fight as a team but you know individually doing their own tactics to try to
defeat the spooktator which has become enraged and has taken a you know violent visceral form
and is attacking these children and their grow bugs because it wants to seize them for their happiness
and Ava has no not Ava Kat has the bright idea for the grow bugs to combine so that they can
become a more powerful being yes this is uh it's organic gata it's a combination robot well no they
don't they turn into little machines and then they turn into a combination robot a la Power Rangers
or Super Sentai better yet and while they are fighting the spooktator and having some successes
I believe they're unable to actually overcome it and what happens instead is that Kat recognizes
that the reason the spooktator is attacking is because it is broken and sad and empty and hollow
and she feels the same way because she knows how it feels she has sympathy which I believe is the
correct word it's when you know the actual feeling versus empathy is when you can
understand the feeling intellectually and you feel badly for the person because of that but she is
resonating sympathetically with the grow bug who she doesn't know is a grow bug who's a spooktator
who's attacking them because she knows that deep down inside it is hurt and alone and just wants a
friend so she runs back into the labyrinth finds her way to the center of it where uh
where the grow bug the B grow bug who goes by the name of something or other which I forgot hold
on let me check my list real quick who goes by the name of his is trapped and alone and unable to
escape from the cage of sorrow and sadness that she's in when in reality the cage of sorrow and
sadness is open on one side and she's just turned around not looking at the empty space only looking
at the bars and seeing that she cannot escape however her interaction with cat and cats bid
or offer to be her friend awakens her and helps her to turn around and see the truth that all she
has to do is come out of the cage and she can be free of her sadness and she can be free of her
sadness and uh together they leave the monster outside disappears the spooktator is no more
and the labyrinth dissipates and uh this grow bug is reunited with you know this grow bug now has a
friend of a human his is now friends with cat see what I did there and cat and the grow bugs and her
friends uh all embrace his and I believe they have a fun sleepover party late into the night
uh before the grow bugs have to leave and go on their own so with that summary of cat and the
grow bug with the understanding of the issue that his is dealing with and the fact that his is
actually in not in the majority of the book because she's taking this other form the form of this
spooktator how do I tell that story when swoosh took over who is from uh Ava and the grow bug
she acknowledged that in the story of twang and hya that there was the power of love that helped
them out in that situation but she advocated for uh this might be spoilers for the book the power of
courage instead because if you have the courage of heart you can do anything regardless of whether
or not you love somebody and maybe in some strange way you can even see courage as being a form of
love it's a love so big and brave that it won't be intimidated and it's a love so profound and
compassionate that it doesn't really care who it's risking its life for which I think is super
interesting in harmony in the grow bug the harmony in the grow bug story is about empathy but the
story that wisp tells instead the butterfly grow bug is one of not joyfully accepting
whatever comes to you because it is ultimately something happening for you not to you but
it acknowledges that through the darkness and through the difficulties there is growth and
there is strength found or an opportunity for growth to be had and strength to be found
and in a way it talks about like heroic service and duty to others because while harmony does
basically break free of her delusion on her own really with the help of her parents in the in the
dream world it is only through being empowered by wisp that she's able to actually overcome
the conflict and the difficulty she was facing so she was misled was blind was confused she
gained clarity but then along with her clarity clarity and being correct about something is not
enough you need to have the power and the ability to do something so harmony got the power and the
maybe the agency or maybe she already had the agency but she didn't have the effective leverage
or the the tools that she needed to actually affect the change she wanted to and wisp became
that for her in kind of a mechanistic cold way like she wasn't mean or anything but it wasn't
like oh i love you my friend it's you're my friend i'm going to help you it's you're in trouble you
need help i'm going to help you in whatever way i can and here with cat and the grow bug we have
cat rescuing hiss the grow bug from her sadness and despair and helping hiss helped cat she
she empathized with cat or with hiss rather and was able to offer her the thing that she needed
most and in doing so she became whole and that power and that beauty and that light was shared
and spread and it broke through the darkness that was consuming both of them so then relating that
back to this story does that mean i totally got interrupted had a conversation or two and now i
cannot remember does that mean what does that imply that i should do what with cat and the grow bug
harmony was helped in a not you know in a neutral just way good way because that's what grow bugs do
and now this girl bug is lost and hurt and in need of help and cat is the one who ends up doing it
in that book so that's what she empathizes and has sympathy with her and you know wants to break
through the darkness because she felt the pain of being friendless and lonely and didn't want
somebody else to feel that way so when she went outside of herself she you know broke through that
but what does that mean and what is the lesson that hiss has for the grow bug cadets is it that grow
bug cadets can go bad too i don't know i actually am thinking that i should use that concept that grow
bags grow bugs can go bad too and maybe and this is not dictation this is actually for developing
the book later the cybugs are a thing from harmony and the grow bug in the background you don't know
about it through reading the book and all right at least i don't think you do i don't think i
mention it them in there at all but it's in my backstory and my notes that i made on developing
the story and there's this whole other thing and i didn't know what to do with the cybugs or where
they came from or anything like that except i do have a notion of somebody using animal cyborgs
even including insects for different purposes and it just hit me what if a grow bug can go bad
and what if the first cybug like it's a fallen angel fallen grow bug and what if the first cybug
is actually a grow bug who's fallen and become corrupted because of whatever and it can be kind
of like a you know cool motive still murder situation where and i'm not going to go over
the backstory but you know something happened with this grow bug maybe it's a very old high
ascended grow bug a grow bug oh what do you call that not wizard whatever i can't remember what
the highest level of grow bug is but maybe it's one of those and it fell and it's become an enemy
of mankind now instead of fulfilling its purpose it's doing the opposite and maybe it's doing that
through um somehow it got mixed up with these with the project apex or whatever it's called that
generates these animal cyborgs and it actually sends an army of cybugs out to destroy these
grow bugs and maybe all of this happens not too too long after the harmony and the grow bug
situation because cybugs were interfered with at that time by well they were interfered with i think
by the actions of uh wisp that were not included in this book or in that book because i kind of
want to put them in a different book um but what if we have that uh you know army of evil cybug
things sent by a corrupted grow bug and that part of this story that his is going to tell
is how she fell into that darkness proving that grow bugs can fall into darkness can become
corrupted can have these negative things happen to them and then that can be turned into uh a point
that she makes that can be seeding and foreshadowing this evil cybug evil grow bug behind these
cybugs that are going to come attack their camp and that way it's bug on bug action that can be
kind of more interesting more exciting that's at least a thought for now
getting back on track for what is the story that i want to tell for
his side of things in grow bug tales i do like the idea of mentioning or speaking about touching on
the vulnerability of grow bugs to fall i don't know if i want it to be i don't know like jedi
where you know you're afraid that you're going to fall to the dark side and you can be seduced by
the dark side because that i don't think that makes sense that just the grow bugs can be seduced by
the grow bugs can be doing something and then they can make the wrong choice and then slowly that
wrong choice will corrupt them and turn them evil i was considering the danger presented to be that
of loneliness or yeah maybe like the corruption of being alone because while the grow bugs do
have to act as independent operators in the field that's just them at the tip of the spear behind
them you have the seers and the keepers who work to maintain the grow bug society and to connect them
to humans uh children who are in danger from hobnots that they can perform their duty that they were
made for i had a thought about maybe you know using the a chain is only as strong as its weakest link
type argument and maybe linking that with the chitin of a young bug is soft and flexible and
doesn't offer that much protection versus the chitin of an older grow bug is going to be rigid
and very strong and able to defend them and maybe talking about the group as like a shell or shield
or barrier and that there are soft spots and when they're stressed they can become hardened but i
don't know if that's accurate and i don't know why they would know about chains necessarily or why
they would you know use chains with the grow bug cadets would know about chains that doesn't really
make sense do i have his explain how she got to the point where the spore of the sorrow spud
had an effect on her because i would think that well yeah it would kind of be interesting if
it could only have an effect on you if you lacked resolve or lack the strength of heart
and i kind of i'm okay with his being cautious and i don't know coming from this place of
vulnerability and weakness uh where she feels badly about having you know become a hobnaut
which is kind of what hya was saying so that's maybe a little too repetitious but i was thinking
maybe she should be cautious and like dubious about things now and what if that kind of or
that caution rather is kind of what endears her to rustle and maybe she's you know the fully
mature balanced portion or balanced uh iteration of that where she has the caution but she also
has the strength to act decisively when she must like she's still an operable feed field agent
because she's able to balance that out she can be cautious she might be a little you know slow or
whatever at certain things but she's gonna get in the thick of it when the time is right and maybe
that can contrast with i feel like chirp probably uh resonates with whoosh or was it swoosh okay i
think it's whoosh maybe it's swoosh let's go with swoosh for now but the ladybug from ava and the
grow bug one of his his story tells of how she became ensnared by the labyrinth of loneliness
and the spud of despair spore and it's almost a cautionary tale and an and an advisement to
the grobacadets about how they need to use discretion and caution in the field so that they
don't become well so they don't become entrapped and weak and in need of assistance like she became
and said they can be strong resilient adaptable uh you know members of grobac society that can help
i can help almost like her story is a story of the virtue of caution and again that can be something
that uh that russell really resonates with and it can be something that bothers chirp and maybe
there can be another back and forth uh featuring the grobacadets but mostly the two of them as they
talk about what uh what she did what if i use as a subtitle for this story from chapter seven his
and the sorrow spud a tale of the virtue of caution or how i learned to start worrying
or how i learned to start worrying and take care of myself i was thinking that i did want to focus on
the dangers within and the dangers without you know they know about the dangers of external things
like shadows and whatnot but are they thinking about and are they concerned about the dangers
within which are that a lack of caution a lack of care a lack of focus just because they're grow
bugs doesn't mean that they're invincible and invulnerable you know uh we saw hya get infected
by the vexivore uh twang did to an extent as well even though that was more on purpose but that they
are susceptible and that there is danger for them maybe bring home the fact that there's danger it's
not just a fear not just a fear or caution of them falling and becoming corrupted which is much more
or which is very unlikely to happen but there is the caution that they have to have because they
aren't invulnerable like i said and things can happen to them which will end their mission and
that's not good and those things come from maybe a lack of focus a lack of caution a lack of
self-awareness so it's good it's wise to have an understanding that they are all part of a chain
they're all part of a chain even though they don't understand so they're all part of something bigger
and interconnected and it's the duty of each member to take care of themselves as best as they can
for the good of the collective so that they can all continue to keep on their mission and
and because of that they need to not slack off to not forget themselves to not let themselves
become complacent almost like saying there is a duty for you as a grow bug as a field agent as
someone who has the responsibility to save the lives of others that you need to take care of
yourself and courage isn't enough you need to temper it with caution because if you don't
you're going to foolishly rush into a situation and have yourself turned into a liability
an enemy or some strange thing in between like the spook jader
I suppose right now the question I'm asking myself is what was his doing that got her stuck
there's a couple questions what got her stuck with the spud spore the sorrow spud spore or
whatever it's called what got her stuck with that and then was she chained to the location
where this happened and or was she able to move around and then another question what is a
sorrow spud and why does it exist is it animal vegetable and mineral I'm going to say it's not
mineral it's definitely vegetable to some extent I wonder if it can be a vegetable
a vegetable that has
a way of feeding itself which is to be parasitic or like a virus I guess parasitic is more accurate
and it interacts with the life form and it alters it and changes it and then turns that thing into a
host to gather more energy and life force to itself and I think I like the idea of it being
tied to a single location so that it can hold on to the they can kind of like conserve energy
and it's kind of like a sarlacc it stays in one place and doesn't do anything other than try to
try to feed and keep existing honestly a sarlacc comes to mind if I didn't already say that I had
to pause my recording real quick but I'm back and I think that that approximates a natural system
now this could be let's just say that's an I really love the concept of invasive species being
enemies or foes and part of that is because I like to think about things being in a naturalistic
way I like to have a a natural or realistic construction to my worlds and when you have
invasive species there's nothing that predates them and therefore they go out of control and
they throw the ecosystem out of balance and it's not that every single one of those entities or
you know life forms need to be because it could be plant tubes needs to be destroyed off of the face
of the planet it's that it doesn't it's not well suited to this environment and maybe other things
can be brought in here to balance it out and bring it into well a sense of balance and have
a natural order be restored or a new natural order grafted on to somewhere where there had
been a disruption because there is such thing as equilibrium and things will swing both ways until
they finally come to a median but that the truth is that since there are many factors and we have
you know open systems within the planet that you have all these different things interfering
with each other and interacting with each other and creating all sorts of edges and
areas of friction and opportunity and just anyway it's it's just really interesting and I think you
can get so much good solid logical reasonable types of conflict out of those things without
saying this is evil well okay it doesn't it devastates this area because there's nothing
to counteract it if there were a natural thing that counteracted it here or if we had something
that adapted to it to counteract it then it would fall into a harmonious you know mean and that
would be fine it'd be great maybe we could even manipulate things like that to at least on a
micro scale to bring about some desired effect that we want it's a anyway the way nature works
it's almost like like if you ever built a yu-gi-oh deck I only have I don't have experiences like
magic but if you've got like a yu-gi-oh deck like the way you can get the cards that run in there
to operate in a certain way as far as effects or magic spells or different types of you know
types of monster fairy monster light monster whatever you can use different tactics to create
like a little sub ecosystem within them that they connect to each other and they have a network
effect that's higher with each other that's more capable and I think that's a really neat idea
anyway what I was saying was or to get back to my point is I like this idea of a naturalistic
a natural mimicking system of things in my world so if this you know spud spore
if this sorrow spud is some sort of plant and I think it should look like a potato and act
like a potato that's funny and kind of neat um
oh man um maybe it's even something under the ground specifically and for whatever reason so I
I need to come up with a reason that hiss was in there and got affected by now that I have a good
grasp and understanding of this and to summarize and that's a key word there chat gpt to summarize
or the summary of this would be that
the sorrow spud spore which is called that by people who encounter it in our world comes from
another world and it is an invasive species here and what it does is it immobilizes other life
forms and then it feeds off of them and in order to keep itself and them alive it one immobilizes
them to minimize their energy expenditure and two it causes them to become a funnel basically
in order to bring more nutrient to itself through whatever means so let's say the
sorrow spud spore has a tentacle or a spore that connects to a life form and then a connection is
formed based on that to the spud itself or the spud roots and then from that other branches come
out one organism hits that two organisms hit that and then from them it's on opposite sides they
branch out even farther and maybe their feelers reach out towards each other and you can have
crossover between them or a nice expanding branching structure and you can basically get this
very far very fast branching out with almost like rhizomes if you think about plants like good grasses
including like bamboo and those spread out and then where they can they sprout up and it just kind
of goes from there so yeah the very natural system and for whatever reason and let's say it's not
that it's in cat's backyard it's somewhere else that it started and it's not that it's in the
started and they're cutting off hiss from that branch of the sorrow spud structure and you know
there's more to be dealt with and maybe that's something that can be expanded upon further at a
later time not in this story at all i would suggest then and this might be something that i
add back into cat and the key of kindness is that the sorrow spud is able to take the energy of
the host that it's attached itself to and it's growing parasitically with it's able to mimic it
and adapt it's almost like a symbiote right it can mimic and reproduce some of its abilities
which is why potentially this would be a really fun idea when cat and hiss have escaped from the
labyrinth of loneliness they are still able to encounter and fight and you know what let's
sixth ranger this up and have hiss the moth grow bug join in with the other grow bugs in their
combination to complete it to cut off the spud monster thing 100 from the sorrow spud and have
it be destroyed it withers away it blows up whatever it does but i think that would be a cool
extra dimension to add to it and that's a way to keep the sorrow spud interesting in later appearances
now because the sorrow spud is a potato mimicking type thing it would have growth underground and
it would spread from there its network or its net that it would catch things in in order to incorporate
them into itself and ensure its persistent life so what i'm thinking is somehow
this is a note to pay attention to hiss was rooting around in the ground for something
one of her grow bug grow bug activities which is g-r-o-b-u-g no debya there and while she was doing
that she was afflicted by a spore or caught in the spud network and due to that she was able to
due to that she became trapped by it and i do not know what story that was for
but i also don't really think it matters and i kind of don't want to elaborate on it
moving on from that i had considered making hisp hisp not hisp hiss the moth somebody who
is very much in alignment with
russell the moth as far as being a cautious person and i was considering having her story be one
be one the story that she tells to the grow bug cadets be one that focuses on the virtues of
caution however thinking all this out i do not see where her being cautious is relevant or hinted at
in the story of cat and the key of kindness i almost think the opposite could be true
and maybe maybe chirp can give russell a hard time about that that cat reached out to
his and made friends with her and it solved a lot of problems but she was only able to do that
because she had the courage and the outgoingness to a certain extent to go ahead and do that and
his was almost kind of trapped in an introverted way where she was reclusive and secluded to herself
while suffering and wanting warm interactions with others but unable to get them and when cat
shook her from that she was able to bring her out so does that mean that his is a timid withdrawn
quiet kind of person or would it suggest that perhaps she's the opposite and maybe the
spud use that aspect of her to fuel its activities as her to draw others in to the labyrinth of
loneliness that would make sense what i'm trying to wind up to is should his point
or lesson be the importance of boldness and taking action that is good that you're not sure will work
does that have anything to do with faith and trust and can that be part of what she's saying
not the hippie dippy trust the process everything's happening to you you know for you not to you idea
that wisp brought up but maybe something i guess related to that but maybe something
that wisp brought up but maybe something i guess related to that which is that you don't know
what's going to happen until you try so you may as well try and you might just surprise yourself
and do something amazing like depending on her personality i can see her lamenting being stuck
as a spooktator and not thinking that was something good at all or not focusing on trying to see the
good in it except for the fact that when someone took a chance on her she was able to get free
and then when she took a chance with them they were able to get free faster and permanently and
you know what now this is making me think i might need to rearrange the scenario a little in the
cat book in order to make it so that hiss coming out of the labyrinth and then facing the monster
is what brings it to the point where they have to where they get to combine and it's less that
she's going to play the six ranger role and that cat's going to randomly come up with the idea for
them to combine and it's going to be more that she sees that something's wrong and something's not
working their attacks are ineffectual so she goes in and gets hiss at that point brings hiss out
and then hiss suggests that they implement the power of teamwork much as
cat had done teamworky stuff with her to free her from the labyrinth that now they will free
themselves as a group by working together as a team and that is when we have the climactic moment
of them combining and then having combination robot grow bug grow bug night battle against the
mad unleashed crazy spook jeter
that sounds like a better idea and i think it will require minimal rewrites in cat and the key of
kindness and the lesson of being bold and taking and making calculated risks in order to succeed
and achieve something great can be very good foreshadowing for stuff that happens later in the
book with the heroic deeds undertaken by the cadets when things are at their worst for the robot
camp so perhaps i need to come up with a tiny synopsis and outline of what
his story is going to be
his story is going to be at this point or rather the story that she's going to tell
the grow bug cadets assembled there because the stage is hers and she's here to share with them
the theme object point of her story is being bold and taking action when you see a wild chance for
a wild chance for success especially when things are at their worst because sometimes those
wild bold outlandish moves are just the thing that you need in order to succeed and achieve your goals
that being the case which by the way i did not come up with a summary or a synopsis or a outline
for this section i know that it's too bad but thinking about that and thinking about her
character i think that she's going to be very brash and bold and that chirps actually like her
maybe best of all and that she won't let necessarily glimmer introduce her to the
crowd she's going to come into the circle and she won't be introspective and quiet like kya was and
uh she won't be hippie dippy like uh the last one like the butterfly um like wisp she will just
go out there and be super extroverted and hey grow bug cadets i've got a story for you listen up
you're gonna like this one and you're gonna like it and you might even want to try it sometime
on your own so i'm breaking in to say that i actually did 10 minutes of writing earlier today
i uh just typed on the keyboard i actually wrote down that summary that i mentioned earlier in this
audio and i put it at the top of chapter seven of grow bug tales and i've done some reworking and
some rethinking and i was inspired to rewrite well basically the rewriting that i did today
was to change the fight that the three grow bugs have with spooktator so that they fight it and
defeat it on their own sort of uh but just like in super sendai power rangers once the thing is
defeated in its first form you know it then grows giant or whatever it's not going to go giant it's
just it's going to be defeated they're going to have a false moment of victory they're going to
realize something's bad then cat will go into the labyrinth do everything with hiss and then when cat
and hiss emerge like i was just saying they will or hiss will have the great idea of hey let's
combine we can do this and there'll be maybe a question asked about that and she can say i know
we can you know if we're going to be friends you got to trust me and i'm going to do everything i
can to help you that's even nice i like that i'll do everything i can to help you and we're going to
you know overcome this guy and uh you know just watch what we grow bugs can do or something like
that because i do have a line in there about like well is that possible i don't know with all our
girlbugs done maybe they can uh so yeah i think that'll be fun and of course that's like a little
easter egg callback or easter egg if a little callback to uh for people who've read the other
books they'll know that harmony and turn into a common writer basically and uh ava turned into an
ultra man uh ultra woman ultra girl whatever uh with swoosh so uh yeah it's within the wheelhouse
of them to somehow turn into a you know magical robot what does that robot look like i don't know
yet um i'm going to start working on cover designs though uh for all five slash six books and um i
have a great idea but that's just tangent i won't be designing the robot now i'm going to wait you
know hopefully i can do all of the or the plan is to do all of the cover designs within a week
uh maybe you know 10 days at the most and then i will i guess have to come up with a little bit
of a design for that mecha but i don't know just some ideas i'm a little concerned about what it's
going to look like and i'm glad earlier when i was writing this is a lesson to learn i'm glad earlier
when i was writing uh this i don't know a month or so ago that i just or maybe it was two months
ago now i didn't focus on well i i need to have a praying mantis crane and a
and a ladybug jet and all that kind of stuff and i didn't waste my time or energy on that at all i
just let it be and left it open for me to come and fill the gap in later which is what i'm going to
do but not quite yet i got a little more writing to do but uh right now i was thinking about this
based on these new revelations i'm having about piss and the fact that her personality or her like
main focal point her world view is seen through the lens of friendship uh friendship and maybe unity
i thought oh that's perfect for her being like the super sentai one right um so not according to
the dawn brothers but anyway uh i got an idea for what to do to have her address the grow bug
circle and i'm going to go ahead and start that dictation now
so
hey there cadets i'm his
and i'm so glad to be here
i've been watching all of you and i've noticed that while you all get along
i can see a spark of friendship
i can see a few sparks of friendship
between some of you that's great
back when i was a cadet
my friend pop and i got into so much trouble
what happened was we were on this trek around the camp and pop thought she saw something
she went after it and got lost so i went after her and
i beg your pardon glimmer butted in
but now is not the time his
his turned to glimmer and chuckled sorry you're right the part of the story is that
we helped each other out of a situation and had we not been there for each other
it wouldn't have ended well for either of us
this story is a new one it happened not too long ago and it's about another friend
actually it's about a friend of mine who's been in the camp for a while now
it's a friend actually a few friends that i met
after i had gotten lost too
i was on my way back from a mission where i well actually never mind i'll tell you about that some
other time the point is it was getting late and the sun was already about to come up so i stopped
to rest when i wake up something's wrong i can't quite tell what it is it turns out i was in a sour
sorrow spud patch
grow bugs have encountered sorrow spuds before and they are not something that can easily be ignored
they are nasty parasitic plants that spread themselves out like a spider's web anything
that gets caught in them they can drain life energy from
anything that gets caught in them they can drain life energy from and
in my case it turns out it was able to do even more
i became trapped in a cage a cage that i could have gotten out of the whole time
the sorrow spud and i formed some sort of connection that flowed both ways it was able to
pull life energy from me while keeping me alive enough to use my powers to help pull in more
victims for it to drain
life out of the way it trapped me was it stole all my joy i couldn't feel happiness i felt completely alone
like no one would be looking for me no one was out there and no one was looking for me
it was a really terrible feeling and for whatever reason that sadness that hunger and that desperation
would only feel better when i was doing exactly what the sorrow spud wanted me to
why am i standing here today in front of you telling you this story well obviously it's because i got out
how did i get out though this was really weird
this girl cat and her cousins ended up trapped in this labyrinth of loneliness
that the sorrow spud and i created together i became trapped in this cage but because of my powers
part of me was able to roam around this maze as a strange
ghost-like figure it was me and i was it it was my light but it was dim almost a shadow
it was always tied to me but i could move around with it or move it around while i stayed stuck in my cage
and the first kid who i met that day
is now my good friend her name is cat and she reached out to me when no one else did
she was lonely just like me
she was lonely just like me but she was really brave too after she and her cousins had gotten out
of the labyrinth i was so desperate to get them back to not feel lonely anymore to try to take
their happy memories so i could feel happy again that
i summed all of my strength with the encouragement of the sorrow spud
and my ghost turned into a monster that attacked the kids
they were able to defeat me it the rampaging spooktator but
then the sorrow spud took over and
put all of its force into
getting this monster back up on its feet attacking the kids again and it was gonna
and it was so desperate that it attacked them more fiercely
that's when kat came in
Macau
That's when Kat came in
She offered me friendship and helped release me from my cage
It turned out
That she was kind to me that when she it turned out that when she was kind to me and offered me friendship the
bars of
Of my cage didn't work anymore. I
Was free I could see my way out and I took it as soon as I could
You would think that would be the end of the spook tater monster outside of the labyrinth, but it wasn't
like I said somehow the
sorrow spud patch
the sorrow spud
Was able to take some of my power and energy and life force for me and it used that to make
the spook tater
Monster even stronger and
More powerful
The labyrinth disappeared, but the monster remained and
Kat and I could see that
The grow bugs and her cousins were in trouble
So we rushed over to them as quickly as we could and I had this crazy idea
The three of them had been fighting the spook tater monster
On their own as a team
Each one would do something different because that's all they could do, but it was a big monster
And we were little grow bugs, but we don't always have to be little what if we could combine our power
and
become something bigger and stronger that could defeat
That could match the spook tater and
Defeat it and hopefully destroy the whole sorrow spud once and for all
The kids weren't so sure but the other grow bugs
Knew that we could do it
So we merged into
Something like the image of a warrior
That cat and the other kids had seen before and together
We defeated the spook tater and destroyed
The sour
Sorrow spud patch
Comment it's just supposed to be sorrow spud
not
Sour spud but probably because of sour patch kids sour
somehow keeps getting in there and
note
So I'd say it's time to stop dictation and start to comment I
Just came back from being interrupted
I don't know what happened, but I will wrap this up by telling you the goal was to write chapter 7 of grow bug tales
what ended up happening was I wrote I
Rewrote a little bit of
Cat in the grow bug which corresponds to this because his is the grow bug in cat in the grow bug and then she's the
focal point or the one telling the story in
Chapter 7 of grow big tails. However, I went back and rewrote part of that story and
I think I improved it by doing that and
I also came up with a whole new titling structure for the chapter book as well as the
picture books and if I want to make more picture books in the future, I now have a format to follow and
It will make sense. It'll be distinct. It'll maintain the consistent branding and
If I do a bigger grow bug tales book or other grow bug tales chapter books like this first one
I'll be able to come up with titles for all of them or subtitles for all of them that will unite them and it'll be obvious
Okay, this is a bigger chapter book. It's a prose if there's no, you know pictures with except
You know cover image maybe in chapter headings perhaps and these other books are obvious
So it won't be like super blatant
But once you there is an easily detectable pattern and it makes it easily
Understandable that all of them are in a series together despite the fact that summer picture books and some are
Chapter books or novellas or whatever they're gonna end up being and I don't currently plan on writing an additional grow bug tales
Chapter book, but if I were going to I would know how to and I could go ahead and write it about anything
Which I think is interesting
And I like that flexibility it makes me feel free and it makes me feel like with that bit of planning that I did
I'll be able to like I said have the freedom to
Maneuver however, I want to grow going forward with the grow bug books
But also it's given me a really strong central idea of how to brand
Books for series going forward and that really makes me pleased because I have the whole huge superhero
Book idea universe holy heroes, which I've mentioned before and I now have this new
separate
universe
Idea that I want to do that. I'll talk about later
But so yeah, the plane was to write chapter 7 of grow bug tales
I didn't I instead wrote I rewrote and renamed rebranded grow bug tales
Cat and the key of kindness that is now book 4 in the grow book picture book series
So you see there with the title it focuses on the kid not the grow bug grow bug is in the title
Used to be cat the grow bug now grow bug tales is the main title under that it identifies that it's about cat
And then there's something about this key of kindness. So I don't know if all of them have an emotion. Oh
They're all either an emotional title or an action title related to the kid and it's possessive
so cats cute kindness zeb such-and-such Rex's whatever and
That's how they'll be distinguished and you can say oh, it's the Rex book the cat book the whatever book and
That all makes sense. So I also
Did make good solid notes for going back into chapter 7 and now with the rewrites that I've done
in cat and the key of kindness I
now have a much better understanding of the personality of
His and I actually did dictate a little bit of that which is in this recording. So I was
momentarily confused about the reality of the situation and I think I'm gonna have
Once the transcript of this episode is done. I think for my own benefit for my own notes. I will have
chat GDP
Read the transcript and give me the highlights and tell me like what did I accomplish by the end of this?
episode of
Story over everything which is gonna be again story over everything episode 22 and I think I like this format
It's an hour long. I did not expect it to go this long and we'll see how long the future
Writing focus writing in public focused episodes are of story over everything, but I'm happy that I'm writing
I feel good writing and I think making
A priority is really push it in my mind. It's really sparked my imagination a lot of ways
I honestly was feeling even yesterday or the day before I was feeling very much stuck and how I didn't know how I was gonna
Proceed and I kept thinking about it and analyzing it and trying to come up with you know, figuring well, what's my formula?
What's my layout? I don't really have a layout. It's just like or a
Outline I just have these broad strokes, but they're basically enough
And I'm not gonna say what the outline is right now, but it's a structure that makes sense for the story
and I even tried to have chat DTP determine a
Outline for me and it ended up coming up with the exact same outline that I had formed based on all the information
I'd given it which I guess kind of makes sense, but
It was really interesting. It was really interesting to use that tool and
I'm figuring out different ways to use it and I'm getting smarter at using it and I'm it's interesting
It's I'm a little less satisfied so far because it hasn't given me like any exact content
Like it's giving me blurbs, but I rewrote or I wrote my own blurbs and I've maybe stole a line or two from
Some of the AI blurbs that I got from it and incorporated them into mine
But I'm really overall gonna probably use mine and not really mess with them too much, but it's cool
I've been asking it to rate my blurbs or rate my writing even I even asked it to rate
Cat in the key of kindness and I was less than thrilled with the score, but I think maybe it lacks context
I might need to talk to other Tokusatsu fans
To see how they like it, but I did reread it today
I was reading to my wife and there were a couple things in it that I didn't like and I thought well
Maybe I'll revise those and maybe it's right that it could be written better than it is now
So I should definitely check that out. But anyway, that's the end of my journey for now this
work on chapter 7 book 4 of the grow bug series or grow bug tales and
That's all the progress I've made. Like I said, if you want to look at the show notes the extra show notes on the website
I'll have a
condensed or summarized version of everything that came out of this episode and it'll be done for me by chat GTP and I'll run through and
I'll just like do some proofreading correct spelling and things and things like that. So anyway, that's it
That's this is me on my latest step in my author journey. I'm using these AI tools and I'm
Figuring out how to cultivate a discipline any consistency so that I am writing more and more and more and becoming a better author
Because I want to get this stuff done as soon as possible. Anyway, until next time folks take care. 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
There you can find all of my analysis art and fiction. I
Cover books tokusatsu comic books anime and more
Look around you're sure to find something else that you'll enjoy as well. This has been a story over everything production