Behind the Music...er, 'In A World': Time to Die

Wherein we investigate the history of our winning idea, a dark horse that kept the race slow and steady while others surged or faltered.

I’m honored to write this post, as I am currently the first official Spitball! Employee of the Month. I’d like to thank Shockah, my peers, and the readers who read what we write, which would be you right now, eh? I’m very much looking forward to my doughnut reward.

So, Time to Die:

It made its nameless debut on January 21, 2006 as part of our synopsis inspired by random songs. The song that inspired this story is Charlotte Hatherly’s brilliant twisted pop masterpiece ‘Kim Wilde’, whose lyrics can be read to see if you can find the inspiration I somehow found in it. Mostly it was these lines:

I can feel my honey, oh yeah!
Don’t fall under my wheels
Run over, just like a juggernaut
Oh yeah! send his body back to me

although there are others that led me to the story too. Here’s an iTunes link (full disclosure: we are an iTunes affiliate, but this link is not an affiliate link). I’m actually a little pleased with this story winning, because this song is one of my all time favorites. In a stroke of perfect pop irony, Charlotte Hatherley performed a duet of ‘Kids in America’ on Kim Wilde’s new album. We are, after all, kids in America.

Time to Die next appeared in a January 22 post, where it was titled and ranked (as Shockah mentioned, #10 for me). Shockah then voted (#6) for the story on January 23.

The initial playoff rounds were announced that same day, with Time to Die going up against a Shockah story called Reminiscence (#3 for me, #13 for Shockah).

Shockah delivered us a statistical analysis in which our winning story faired poorly, coming in at 12 out of 16.

We dug into the story first on February 12 with my pros and cons list in round six. Shockah offered up his on February 14.

We gave Reminiscence its fair due, at my insistence, in rounds 6.3 and 6.4, where both of us laid out potential plots for the story.

Shockah pushed a vote on February 18, voting (of course), for a story you all know now. I cemented its win later that same day.

Shockah named the Heat #2 stories, which were then ranked (mine and his) and Time to Die was pitted against Rasputin the Translator.

We picked up that round on April 11 with my character sketches. For Time to Die, I looked at Rose St. Germain, our protagonist. Shockah followed on April 24 with his character sketch of our antagonist, James Crowley Okkervil (bonus points for anybody guessing who Shockah was listening to at that time).

On April 24 I also posted to talk about a conversation Shockah and I had at a coffee shop about these ideas we had for Time to Die (and, I haven’t forgotten the essay yet, my friend). Shockah followed up with this post

On April 30th I had a crazy idea to enable both stories to move forward if they were so capable, and we discussed that idea at length.

Round 10 discussion on May 30, with the two stories once again pitted against each other. It continued, and continued and then we started to vote, and we both were in agreement that Rasputin and Time to Die should move forward.

Since the Summer and Fall have been slow around here, we decided to speed things up and just list our favorites in order, assign points based on order and then let the winner win. We had six semi-finalists, and after Shockah cast his votes, and I cast mine, pushing Time to Die into the winners circle.

Thanks for coming along on this whistle-stop tour. We hope Time to Die will make a fun story to watch progress on.