Just who is Jim Chapters?

It's a good question.  He's a distraction is what he is. He's drawing me away from "Dangling Threads", my proposed collection of Doctor Who short stories.

Well, that's what he is. Doesn't tell us who he is.

Jim Chapters came to life as I was discussing the criticism I received regarding chapters in a short story. That criticism was offered by a friend of mine called Jim, however I know several Jims and to differentiate him from the other Jims I'd been discussing I referred to him as Jim 'Chapters' so my other friend knew what Jim I meant.

"Jim Chapters? That sounds like a character in a book."

He was right of course. A check on Google and various other search engines confirmed that I hadn't heard the name anywhere else before. Jim Chapters was a blank slate and he'd taken up residence in my imagination.

Jim has been slowly developing in my mind ever since. He's been picking up character traits, likes and dislikes, a fashion sense and a history. He's become a person and he's become a pest. He's demanding his story gets told and he's not taking no for an answer.

So, I find myself at a cross roads. Do I press on and finish the interconnected short stories I've started plotting or do I give in to Jim's demands and start telling his story instead?

I honestly don't know.

Answers on a postcard please.

The Next Idea

So, I'm entering the final lap of  Setting Stones. While I've been sitting waiting for the feed back to come in (all positive so far) I've been letting my mind wander as to what I should write about next. It's tempting to move off of Doctor Who, but I'm not going to just yet. I've got some ideas bouncing around my head regarding what kind of world I want to write about. but I want to sharpen my skills in a playground I know first before heading out to totally new ground. Especially as the BBC are not interested in any Who fiction that isn't about the 11th Doctor.

So, what have I got in mind? I'm going to be a bit more ambitious: I'm going to write a collection of much shorter stories, each one with a different Doctor. 11 in total, with a common thread running through each one.

My first page of notes, that I've left at the lab dammit, has a single line of dialogue for each Doctor and the rough outline for the common thread. Planning between 1 and 2 thousand words for each segment.

This isn't going to hurt at all.................