Mythlands: THE HEIST

Introduction to the Mythical Creatures.

The Mythical Creatures and The Mythlands they inhabit were born sort of by accident. I had joined a writing site called WriteOn (now sadly closed as of March 22nd 2017) and had been encouraged to join in their weekend writing challenges as a way of meeting and interacting with people (which worked spectacularly well, as I now have over 100 new writer friends, but that's another story!) - I did so religiously, doing at least one challenge prompt every weekend, starting off with mostly one off shorts and gradually developing ongoing characters and concepts.

The weekend challenge stories (and later writing challenges such as Story Cubes and others) were roughly 500-1500 worders with prompt words (or picture dice, cards etc) and a line such as 'Imagine you were waiting in a queue -' Prompt word could be 'Impatient.'

One weekend I received the following prompt from a STORY CUBES challenge and wrote what was intended to be a one off story:

DiceRoll – FIRE, FAIRY, TORTOISE and my story description for NEPOTISM was -

The CEO of MCI receives Ariel's report into the Arson Investigation at one of the Corporation's Eateries. Is it as he feared - that the fire was caused by an old friend's negligence?

And that 532 word story was it for the idea ... except it wasn't. I had an idea for more Mythical Creatures but it would only work if I got certain words as a prompt for the next weekend challenge. I needed either cat or owl, but what were the chances!!??

It turns out that was the week of the superbowl so from a prompt of 'Superb Owl,' and the instruction - In 500 words, imagine what happens when a character encounters a superb owl came a 572 word story (I use the word count as more of a guide than an absolute limit) entitled WHAT A HOOT! It took place within the same continuity of The Mythlands, with some vague connections to the first story, but using different characters.

By this time I was receiving comments and interest in the Mythical Creatures so I decided to write one more ... just one more (I swear it!) tale, albeit a bit longer. I called it THE HEIST and used the Story Cubes picture dice roll of Feb 7th 2016 to put together a slightly longer tale of 1053 words in three short parts. DiceRoll – RAT, APPLE, CACTUS.

That was it and while the ending could have been expanded on, I left it as a bit of a morality tale - after all only a perfect prompt the following week could inspire me enough to ... I think you know where I'm going with this ...

The Prompt – Unrequited.

The Challenge - In 500 words, tell a story in which love is unrequited.

So I added a fourth and final part ... until the fifth part. After that I gave up and decided to give into the inspiration and requests for more HEIST. To date I have done over 100 parts and turned this into a sprawling fantasy adventure with ... well everything. Those small flash fiction parts are now mini chapters in a planned THREE PART epic (I am as of today, April 3rd 2017) almost finished Part Two and together with a spin off (Convention of Cats) that fits in between two Heist chapters (with story points that play into The Heist) and a companion series called Mythical Origins (with mostly one off more personal stories about Mythland inhabitants and the Mythlands itself) I am way on my way to producing George RR Martin amounts of material and hopefully a concept that will see print in it's own discrete collections (It's already serialized in Volumes 2-4 - 5 due soon - of my Amazon published BITE SIZE STORIES, along with all my other flash fiction) and maybe even animation or film and other media.

I have set up a Facebook page and am working with artists to provide visuals of some of the characters - check it out, but to avoid spoilers, I would advise you wait until you've read a bunch of The Heist first. https://www.facebook.com/MythicalCreaturesInterdimensional/

Following this intro you can read in order the first two shorts, followed by The Heist. 

There is also a companion collection MYTHICAL ORIGINS (featuring one offs or smaller multi parters featuring some characters) which, along with any other Mythlands material will eventually be posted on here separately.

Thanks. :)